Walden

for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum
raised in the town.  If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why
should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century
offers?  Why should our life be in any respect provincial?  If we
will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the
best newspaper in the world at once? -- not be sucking the pap of
"neutral family" papers, or browsing "Olive Branches" here in New
England.  Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us,
and we will see if they know anything.  Why should we leave it to
Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?  As the
nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever
conduces to his culture -- genius -- learning -- wit -- books --
paintings -- statuary -- music -- philosophical instruments, and the
like; so let the village do -- not stop short at a pedagogue, a
parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our
Pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock
with these.  To act collectively is according to the spirit of our
institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more
flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman's.  New England
can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and
board them round the while, and not be provincial at all.  That is
the uncommon school we want.  Instead of noblemen, let us have noble
villages of men.  If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the
river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the
darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.


                              Sounds

    But while we are confined to books, though the most select and
classic, and read only particular written languages, which are
themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of
forgetting the language which all things and events speak without
metaphor, which alone is copious and standard.  Much is published,
but little printed.  The rays which stream through the shutter will
be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed.  No
method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever
on the alert.  What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry,
no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most
admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking
always at what is to be seen?  Will you be a reader, a student
merely, or a seer?  Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk
on into futurity.
    I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans.  Nay, I
often did better than this.  There were times when I could not
afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work,
whether of the head or hands.  I love a broad margin to my life.
Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I
sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery,
amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude
and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless
through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or
the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was
reminded of the lapse of time.  I grew in those seasons like corn in
the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would
have been.  They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much
over and above my usual allowance.  I realized what the Orientals
mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works.  For the most
part, I minded not how the hours went.  The day advanced as if to
light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening,
and nothing memorable is accomplished.  Instead of singing like the
birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.  As the
sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had
I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my
nest.  My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any
heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the
ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is
said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one
word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward
for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing
day."  This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but
if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should
not have been found wanting.  A man must find his occasions in
himself, it is true.  The natural day is very calm, and will hardly
reprove his indolence.
    I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those
who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the
theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never
ceased to be novel.  It was a drama of many scenes and without an
end.  If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating
our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we
should never be troubled with ennui.  Follow your genius closely
enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every
hour.  Housework was a pleasant pastime.  When my floor was dirty, I
rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass,
bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor,
and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom
scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had
broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to
allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost
uninterupted.  It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out
on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my
three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen
and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories.  They seemed glad to
get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in.  I was
sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat
there.  It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things,
and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most
familiar objects look out of doors than in the house.  A bird sits
on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and