Walden

priest the schoolmaster: for I was not the State's schoolmaster, but
I supported myself by voluntary subscription.  I did not see why the
lyceum should not present its tax-bill, and have the State to back
its demand, as well as the Church.  However, at the request of the
selectmen, I condescended to make some such statement as this in
writing:-- "Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau,
do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society
which I have not joined."  This I gave to the town clerk; and he has
it.  The State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be
regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand on
me since; though it said that it must adhere to its original
presumption that time.  If I had known how to name them, I should
then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never
signed on to; but I did not know where to find a complete list.
    I have paid no poll-tax for six years.  I was put into a jail
once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the
walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and
iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I
could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution
which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be
locked up.  I wondered that it should have concluded at length that
this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to
avail itself of my services in some way.  I saw that, if there was a
wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more
difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be
as free as I was.  I did not for a moment feel confined, and the
walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.  I felt as if I
alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax.  They plainly did not know
how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred.  In
every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they
thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that
stone wall.  I could not but smile to see how industriously they
locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again
without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was
dangerous.  As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish
my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against
whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog.  I saw that the State
was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver
spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I
lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.
    Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense,
intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses.  It is not
armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical
strength.  I was not born to be forced.  I will breathe after my own
fashion.  Let us see who is the strongest.  What force has a
multitude?  They only can force me who obey a higher law than I.
They force me to become like themselves.  I do not hear of men being
forced to have this way or that by masses of men.  What sort of life
were that to live?  When I meet a government which says to me, "Your
money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?
It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help
that.  It must help itself; do as I do.  It is not worth the while
to snivel about it.  I am not responsible for the successful working
of the machinery of society.  I am not the son of the engineer.  I
perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the
one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey
their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can,
till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other.  If a plant
cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.
    The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.  The
prisoners in their shirt-sleeves were enjoying a chat and the
evening air in the doorway, when I entered.  But the jailer said,
"Come, boys, it is time to lock up"; and so they dispersed, and I
heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments.
My room-mate was introduced to me by the jailer as "a first-rate
fellow and a clever man."  When the door was locked, he showed me
where to hang my hat, and how he managed matters there.  The rooms
were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the
whitest, most simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment
in the town.  He naturally wanted to know where I came from, and
what brought me there; and, when I had told him, I asked him in my
turn how he came there, presuming him to be an honest man, of
course; and, as the world goes, I believe he was.  "Why," said he,
"they accuse me of burning a barn; but I never did it."  As near as
I could discover, he had probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk,
and smoked his pipe there; and so a barn was burnt.  He had the
reputation of being a clever man, had been there some three months
waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much
longer; but he was quite domesticated and contented, since he got
his board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated.
    He occupied one window, and I the other; and I saw that if one
stayed there long, his principal business would be to look out the
window.  I had soon read all the tracts that were left there, and
examined where former prisoners had broken out, and where a grate
had been sawed off, and heard the history of the various occupants
of that room; for I found that even here there was a history and a
gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail.
Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are
composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not
published.  I was shown quite a long list of verses which were
composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to
escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.
    I pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, for fear I should
never see him again; but at length he showed me which was my bed,
and left me to blow out the lamp.
    It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never
expected to behold, to lie there for one night.  It seemed to me
that I never had heard the town-clock strike before, nor the evening
sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which
were inside the grating.  It was to see my native village in the