THE VILLAGE |
AFTER HOEING, or perhaps reading and
writing, in the forenoon, I usually bathed again in the pond,
swimming across one of its coves for a stint, and washed the dust of
labor from my person, or smoothed out the last wrinkle which study
had made, and for the afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two
I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is
incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth,
or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic
doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves
and the peeping of frogs. As I walked in the woods to see the birds
and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys;
instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one
direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river
meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon
was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been
prairie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running
over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe
their habits. The village appeared to me a great news room; and on
one side, to support it, as once at Redding & Company's on State
Street, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and other
groceries. Some have such a vast appetite for the former commodity,
that is, the news, and such sound digestive organs, that they can sit
forever in public avenues without stirring, and let it simmer and
whisper through them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether,
it only producing numbness and insensibility to pain- otherwise it
would often be painful to bear- without affecting the consciousness.
I hardly ever failed, when I rambled through the village, to see a
row of such worthies, either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves,
with their bodies inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the
line this way and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous
expression, or else leaning against a barn with their hands in their
pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up. They, being commonly
out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. These are the coarsest
mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or cracked up
before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within
doors. I observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery,
the bar-room, the post-office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part
of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big gun, and a fire-engine, at
convenient places; and the houses were so arranged as to make the
most of mankind, in lanes and fronting one another, so that every
traveller had to run the gauntlet, and every man, woman, and child
might get a lick at him. Of course, those who were stationed nearest
to the head of the line, where they could most see and be seen, and
have the first blow at him, paid the highest prices for their places;
and the few straggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps
in the line began to occur, and the traveller could get over walls or
turn aside into cow-paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground
or window tax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some
to catch him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar;
some by the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller's; and
others by the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the
shoe-maker, or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more terrible
standing invitation to call at every one of these houses, and company
expected about these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully
from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without
deliberation to the goal, as is recommended to those who run the
gauntlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high things, like Orpheus,
who, "loudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre,
drowned the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of danger."
Sometimes I bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts,
for I did not stand much about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a
gap in a fence. I was even accustomed to make an irruption into some
houses, where I was well entertained, and after learning the kernels
and very last sieveful of news- what had subsided, the prospects of
war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together much
longer- I was let out through the rear avenues, and so escaped to the
woods again.
It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town,
to launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark and
tempestuous, and set sail from some bright village parlor or lecture
room, with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug
harbor in the woods, having made all tight without and withdrawn
under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer
man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing.
I had many a genial thought by the cabin fire "as I sailed."
I was never cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I
encountered some severe storms. It is darker in the woods, even in
common nights, than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the
opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my route,
and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint
track which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular
trees which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for
instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the
woods, invariably, in the darkest night. Sometimes, after coming home
thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which
my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, until
I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch, I have
not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought
that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should
forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without
assistance. Several times, when a visitor chanced to stay into
evening, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to conduct him to
the cart-path in the rear of the house, and then point out to him the
direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided
rather by his feet than his eyes. One very dark night I directed thus
on their way two young men who had been fishing in the pond. They
lived about a mile off through the woods, and were quite used to the
route. A day or two after one of them told me that they wandered
about the greater part of the night, close by their own premises, and
did not get home till toward morning, by which time, as there had
been several heavy showers in the meanwhile, and the leaves were very
wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have heard of many going
astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick
that you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is. Some who live
in the outskirts, having come to town a-shopping in their wagons,
have been obliged to put up for the night; and gentlemen and ladies
making a call have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the
sidewalk only with their feet, and not knowing when they turned. It
is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be
lost in the woods any time. Often in a snow-storm, even by day, one
will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to
tell which way leads to the village. Though he knows that he has
travelled it a thousand times, he cannot recognize a feature in it,
but it is as strange to him as if it were a road in Siberia. By
night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater. In our most
trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like
pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go
beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of
some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned
round- for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes
shut in this world to be lost- do we appreciate the vastness and
strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass
again as often as be awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world,
do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the
infinite extent of our relations.
One afternoon, near the end
of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe from
the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have
elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority
of, the State which buys and sells men, women, and children, like
cattle, at the door of its senate-house. I had gone down to the woods
for other purposes. But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw
him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to
belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might
have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run
"amok" against society; but I preferred that society should
run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party.
However, I was released the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and
returned to the woods in season to get my dinner of huckleberries on
Fair Haven Hill. I was never molested by any person but those who
represented the State. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which
held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I
never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent
several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the
woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had
been surrounded by a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could rest
and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few
books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see
what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet,
though many people of every class came this way to the pond, I
suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never
missed anything but one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps
was improperly gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp has
found by this time. I am convinced, that if all men were to live as
simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These
take place only in communities where some have got more than is
sufficient while others have not enough. The Pope's Homers would soon
get properly distributed.
"Nec
bella fuerunt,
Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes."
"Nor
wars did men molest,
When only beechen bowls were in request."
"You who
govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love
virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior
man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the
grass- I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends." The
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