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meadow with a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars an acre and
the use of the land with manure for one year, and his little broad-
faced son worked cheerfully at his father’s side the while, not
knowing how poor a bargain the latter had made. I tried to help him
with my experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest
neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a
loafer, was getting my living like himself; that I lived in a tight light
and clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such
a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in
a month or two build himself a palace of his own; that I did not use
tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not
have to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not
have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as he
began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to
work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to
eat hard again to repair the waste of his system,—a nd so it was as
broad as it was long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for he
was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he had
rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea,
and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that
country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may
enable you to do without these, and where the state does not
endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other
superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use
of such things. For I purposely talked to him as if he were a
philosopher, or desired to be one. I should be glad if all the meadows
on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of
men’s beginning to redeem themselves. A man will not need to study
history to find out what is best for his own culture. But alas! The
culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of
moral bog hoe. I told him, that as he worked so hard at bogging, he
required thick boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon soiled
and worn out, but I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost not
half so much, though he might think that I was dressed like a
gentleman, (which, however, was not the case,) and in an hour or
two, without labor, but as a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as
many fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough money to
support me a week. If he and his family would live simply, they
might all go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amusement.
John heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared with arms a-kimbo,
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and both appeared to be wondering if they had capital enough to
begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It
was sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how
to make their port so; therefore I suppose they still take life bravely,
after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having
skill to split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge, and
rout it in detail;—t hinking to deal with it roughly, as one should
handle a thistle. But they fight at an overwhelming disadvantage,—
living, John Field, alas! Without arithmetic, and failing so.
“Do you ever fish?” I asked. “ “ O yes, I catch a mess now and then
when I am lying by; good perch I catch.” ” “ “ What’s your bait?” ” “ “ I
catch shiners with fish-worms, and bait the perch with them.” “You’d
better go now, John,” ” said his wife with glistening and hopeful face;
but John demurred.
The shower was now over, and a rainbow above the eastern woods
promised a fair evening; so I took my departure. When I had got
without I asked for a dish, hoping to get a sight of the well bottom, to
complete my survey of the premises; but there, alas! Are shallows
and quicksands, and rope broken withal, and bucket irrecoverable.
Meanwhile the right culinary vessel was selected, water was
seemingly distilled, and after consultation and long delay passed out
to the thirsty one,— — not yet suffered to cool, not yet to settle. Such
gruel sustains life here, I thought; so, shutting my eyes, and
excluding the motes by a skilfully directed under-current, I drank to
genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I could. I am not squeamish
in such cases when manners are concerned.
As I was leaving the Irishman’s roof after the rain, bending my
steps again to the pond, my haste to catch pickerel, wading in retired
meadows, in sloughs and bog-holes, in forlorn and savage places,
appeared for an instant trivial to me who had been sent to school and
college; but as I ran down the hill toward the reddening west, with
the rainbow over my shoulder, and some faint tinkling sounds borne
to my ear through the cleansed air, from I know not what quarter, my
Good Genius seemed to say,—G o fish and hunt far and wide day by
day,— farther and wider,—a nd rest thee by many brooks and hearth-
sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy
youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let
the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee every
where at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier
games than may here be played. Grow wild according to thy nature,
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39
like these sedges and brakes, which will never become English hay.
Let the thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin to farmers’ crops?
That is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they
flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy
sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and
faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their
lives like serfs.
O Baker Farm!
“ Landscape where the richest element
Is a little sunshine innocent.” * *
No one runs to revel
On thy rail-fenced lea.” * *
Debate with no man hast thou,
With questions art never perplexed,
As tame at the first sight as now,
In thy plain russet gabardine dressed.” ” * *
“ Come ye who love,
And ye who hate,
Children of the Holy Dove,
And Guy Faux of the state,
And hang conspiracies
From the tough rafters of the trees!”
Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street,
where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it
breathes its own breath over again; their shadows morning and
evening reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home
from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with
new experience and character.
Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out
John Field, with altered mind, letting go “ “ bogging” ” ere this sunset.
But he, poor man, disturbed only a couple of fins while I was
catching a fair string, and he said it was his luck; but when we
changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too. Poor John Field!— I
trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it,— — thinking to
live by some derivative old country mode in this primitive new
country,—t o catch perch with shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I
allow. With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be
poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam’s
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grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his
posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their
heels.
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Higher Laws
s I came home through the woods with my string of fish,
trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse
of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange
thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour
him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which
he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I
found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a
strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might
devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The
wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself,
and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual
life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage
one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.
The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to
me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day
more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and
to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature.
They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which
otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen,
hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields
and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often
in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their
pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with
expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller
on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri
and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He
who is only a traveller learns things at second-hand and by the
halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science
reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for
that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.
A
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They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements,
because he has not so many public holidays, and men and boys do
not play so many games as they do in England, for here the more
primitive but solitary amusements of hunting fishing and the like
have not yet given place to the former. Almost every New England
boy among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling piece between
the ages of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds
were not limited like the preserves of an English nobleman, but were
more boundless even than those of a savage. No wonder, then, that he
did not oftener stay to play on the common. But already a change is
taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an increased
scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend of the
animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society.
Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my
fare for variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of
necessity that the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I might
conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned my philosophy
more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for I had long
felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I went to the
woods. Not that I am less humane than others, but I did not perceive
that my feelings were much affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the
worms. This was habit. As for fowling, during the last years that I
carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and
sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to
think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It
requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for
that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet
notwithstanding the objection on the score of humanity, I am
compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for
these; and when some of my friends have asked me anxiously about
their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes,
—r emembering that it was one of the best parts of my education,—
make them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible,
mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large enough
for them in this or any vegetable wilderness,— — hunters as well as
fishers of men. Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer’s nun, who
“ yave not of the text a pulled hen.
That saith that hunters ben not holy men.”
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There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race,
when the hunters are the “ “ best men,” ” as the Algonquins called them.
We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more
humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my
answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit,
trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the
thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature,
which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its
extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies
do not always make the usual phil-anthropic distinctions.
Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the
most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and
fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he
distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and
leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and
always young in this respect. In some countries a hunting person is
no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd’s dog,
but is far from being the Good Shepherd. I have been surprised to
consider that the only obvious employment, except wood-chopping,
ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever to my knowledge
detained at Walden Pond for a whole half day any of my fellow-
citizens, whether fathers or children of the town, with just one
exception, was fishing. Commonly they did not think that they were
lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a long string of fish,
though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while.
They might go there a thousand times before the sediment of fishing
would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure; but no doubt
such a clarifying process would be going on all the while. The
governor and his council faintly remember the pond, for they went a-
fishing there when they were boys; but now they are too old and
dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know it no more forever. Yet
even they expect to go to heaven at last. If the legislature regards it, it
is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to be used there; but they
know nothing about the hook of hooks with which to angle for the
pond itself, impaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, even in civilized
communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of
development.
I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish without
falling a little in self-respect. I have tried it again and again. I have
skill at it, and, like many of my fellows, a certain instinct for it,
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which revives from time to time, but always when I have done I feel
that it would have been better if I had not fished. I think that I do not
mistake. It is a faint intimation, yet so are the first streaks of
morning. There is unquestionably this instinct in me which belongs
to the lower orders of creation; yet with every year I am less a
fisherman, though without more humanity or even wisdom; at
present I am no fisherman at all. But I see that if I were to live in a
wilderness I should again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter
in earnest. Beside, there is something essentially unclean about this
diet and all flesh, and I began to see where housework commences,
and whence the endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and
respectable appearance each day, to keep the house sweet and free
from all ill odors and sights. Having been my own butcher and
scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the dishes were
served up, I can speak from an unusually complete experience. The
practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness;
and, besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten
my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was
insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little
bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble
and filth. Like many of my contemporaries, I had rarely for many
years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, &c.; not so much because
of any ill effects which I had traced to them, as because they were not
agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not
the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful
to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though I never did so,
I went far enough to please my imagination. I believe that every man
who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in
the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from
animal food, and from much food of any kind. It is a significant fact,
stated by entomologists, I find it in Kirby and Spence, that “some
insects in their perfect state, though furnished with organs of feeding,
make no use of them;” ” and they lay it down as “ “ a general rule, that
almost all insects in this state eat much less than in that of larvae. The
voracious caterpillar when transformed into a butterfly,” ” . . “and the
gluttonous maggot when become a fly,” ” content themselves with a
drop or two of honey or some other sweet liquid. The abdomen under
the wings of the butterfly still represents the larva. This is the tid-bit
which tempts his insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the
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