instants truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only
the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a
legislature for a bait. Thus, even in civilized communities, the
sympathies do not always make the usual philanthropic distinctions.
others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar
charming moral transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way
as well, with less trouble and filth. Like many of my
various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the
If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek
Ved refers when it says, that "he who has true faith in the
raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he
Having bathed, he sat down to re-create his intellectual man. It
was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his
fact, stated by entomologists -- I find it in Kirby and Spence --
continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little
distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means
my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for
objection on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt if
Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not
rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps
would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it
wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in
who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties
than temperance and purity. "That in which men differ from brute
regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles.
strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might
keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I
organs of feeding, make no use of them"; and they lay it down as "a
bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from
answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit,
primitive but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like
the fishes nor the worms. This was habit. As for fowling, during
insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the larva state;
to her preserve-pot. The wonder is how they, how you and I, can
Such is oftenest the young mans introduction to the forest, and
Else man not only is the herd of swine,
questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry.
friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society.
increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest
As I came home through the woods with my string of fish,
obliged to confess, because, however much it is to be regretted,
content themselves with a drop or two of honey or some other sweet
into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are
not perceive that my feelings were much affected. I did not pity
fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the
astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The
established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on
believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so
Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands
primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love
loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent
tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact
trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a
boy among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling-piece between the
the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his
I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and
have not yet given place to the former. Almost every New England
attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only,
scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But the notes
channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our
be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she
detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should
so much, to wear a tidy and respectable appearance each day, to keep
beasts," says Mencius, "is a thing very inconsiderable; the common
humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my
found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long
begins at once to refine a mans features, any meanness or
condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of
and one does not see; one listens, and one does not hear; one eats,
berries which I had eaten on a hillside had fed my genius. "The
with the more civilized.
too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know it no more
the house sweet and free from all ill odors and sights. Having been
But hes those devils too which did incline
To his beasts and disafforested his mind!
us. The harp is the travelling patterer for the Universes
whom the dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually
. . . . . . .
My practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far
can for the time pervade and control every member and function of
reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at
heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke
they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes -- remembering that
case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned
thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and that
had traced to them, as because they were not agreeable to my
that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which
There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race,
indulges a taste for jelly made of a calfs foot, or for sardines
studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer
experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live
and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made. It
It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as
We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more
have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and
and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman.
shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you
from regarding myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the
is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun
another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the
I have been surprised to consider that the only obvious employment,
forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most
slumbered in him. They gently did away with the street, and the
come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the
and one does not know the savor of food." He who distinguishes the
it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain
far I am of the opinion of Chaucers nun, who
trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the
trifles.
food for the worms that possess us. If the hunter has a taste for
health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day
sensuality to imbrute them.
because he has not so many public holidays, and men and boys do not
Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and evry beast,
named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a
found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a
not limited, like the preserves of an English nobleman, but were
woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of
particular in these respects. I carry less religion to the table,
invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and
life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more
remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege to "the time of
wisdom; at present I am no fisherman at all. But I see that if I
life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or
philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could
does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? I have
to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole half-day any of
string of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond
some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether
what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but
countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by
one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or
a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but
"yave not of the text a pulled hen
think that I owed a mental perception to the commonly gross sense of
animal food, and from much food of any kind. It is a significant
body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect.
without falling a little in self-respect. I have tried it again and
off, is heard as music, a proud, sweet satire on the meanness of our
our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness
sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see
glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle
even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more
He who is only a traveller learns things at second-hand and by the
intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and
elastic, more starry, more immortal -- that is your success. All
fisher and hunter in earnest. Beside, there is something
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the
see where housework commences, and whence the endeavor, which costs
he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the
Insurance Company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness is
cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is
Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from
does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop but the
poison you. It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery.
as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and
fare for variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of
will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed
race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and
imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of
way -- as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering
precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is
represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I
freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about
more boundless even than those of a savage. No wonder, then, that
of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere from
I think that I do not mistake. It is a faint intimation, yet so are
studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I
as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that
ask no blessing; not because I am wiser than I was, but, I am
philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for
he did not oftener stay to play on the common. But already a change
all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at last grows
halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science
Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my
ages of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds were
will, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more than the
prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri
lives.
cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how
taste, that I have been inspired through the palate, that some
make a good shepherds dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.
great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable
we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men
flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach
wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt
are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take
village, and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him --
animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being
any vegetable wilderness -- hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus
his food in which appetite had no share? I have been thrilled to
contemporaries, I had rarely for many years used animal food, or
legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number of
than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done
divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to
Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an
was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were
hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and
the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was
the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality
myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is
true harvest of my daily life issomewhat as intangible and
extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my
noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a
If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion
indispensable in the minds approximation to God." Yet the spirit
yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be
being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon
mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things
another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. What is
instinct for it, which revives from time to time, but always when I
account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I
John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard
sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose
days work, his mind still running on his labor more or less.
merely.
when the hunters are the "best men," as the Algonquins called them.
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse."
I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I
forever. Yet even they expect to go to heaven at last. If the
knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity?
objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over
every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise
reports what those men already know practically or instinctively,
confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of
hooks to be used there; but they know nothing about the hook of
embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.
pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will
it was one of the best parts of my education -- make them hunters,
conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned my
just one exception, was fishing. Commonly they did not think that
genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness,
liquid. The abdomen under the wings of the butterfly still
mud-turtles, muskrats, and other such savage tidbits, the fine lady
general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat much less
savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him
in me which belongs to the lower orders of creation; yet with every
senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be
nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to
student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person
it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We
sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary.
herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully." Who
not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are
perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in
mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than
than in that of larvae. The voracious caterpillar when transformed
make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest
when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table.
apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the train of his
so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or
genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or
the first streaks of morning. There is unquestionably this instinct
thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which
trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills
were to live in a wilderness I should again be tempted to become a
again. I have skill at it, and, like many of my fellows, a certain
countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might
tea, or coffee, etc.; not so much because of any ill effects which I
play so many games as they do in England, for here the more
sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of his work; but
complete experience. The practical objection to animal food in my
I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding the
lambs, may learn -- and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his
I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish
chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know
sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable
And is not ass himself to all the rest!
in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from
for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.
true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not
head, and he found himself planning and contriving it against his
with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these
hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better
law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however
and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me
that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a
star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
live this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking.
hooks with which to angle for the pond itself, impaling the
cannot be otherwise. A puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with
essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more
cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. We discourse
except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever
They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements,
my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or children of the town, with
necessity that the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I might
for they went a-fishing there when they were boys; but now they are
must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are
life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from
prefer the natural sky to an opium-eaters heaven. I would fain
essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh, and I began to
not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed
bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even in
improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage
that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual
may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to
tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor
subject -- I care not how obscene my words are -- but because I
If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and
holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its
into a butterfly ... and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly"
resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured
a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist
mass of men are still and always young in this respect. In some
over other fields than these. -- But how to come out of this
distress."
year I am less a fisherman, though without more humanity or even
the wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that
the burden of his thought was, that though this kept running in his
and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy
forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr
Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not
god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by
have done I feel that it would have been better if I had not fished.
I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I
indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are
low and fare hard in many respects; and though I never did so, I
I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the
some extent, our very life is our disgrace.--
though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last,
That saith that hunters ben not holy men."
naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The
that "some insects in their perfect state, though furnished with
the while. The Governor and his Council faintly remember the pond,
All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is
food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite
Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a
is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the
closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and
but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not
offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink,
represents the larva. This is the tidbit which tempts his
their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has
him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites
went far enough to please my imagination. I believe that every man
I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my
him forthwith. "A command over our passions, and over the external
equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these; and when
devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The
necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some
for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate who
all the while. They might go there a thousand times before the
Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who
from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond, she
or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them.
low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be
impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the
they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a long
pure; but no doubt such a clarifying process would be going on all
soul not being mistress of herself," says Thseng-tseu, "one looks,
with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity,
went to the woods. Not that I am less humane than others, but I did
"How happys he who hath due place assigned
is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an
investment that never fails. In the music of the harp which
speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion
But to tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less
