s,
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