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a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder,for my snug harbor in the woods,having made all tight without and withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts,leaving only my outer man at the helm,or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing.I had many a genial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 he 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;the grass,when the wind passes over it,bends.”
