satisfy the more pressing wants
first. But are the more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of
acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, I am deterred, for,
so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we are
still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers
did their wheaten. Not that all architectural ornament is to be
neglected even in the rudest periods; but let our houses first be
lined with beauty, where they come in contact with our lives, like the
tenement of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas! I have
been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined with.

Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a
cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to accept
the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention and
industry of mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this, boards and
shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained than
suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities, or
even well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speak understandingly on this
subject, for I have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically
and practically. With a little more wit we might use these materials so
as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our civilization
a blessing. The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.
But to make haste to my own experiment.

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the
woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and
began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth,
for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it
is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an
interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his
hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it
sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked,
covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a
small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing
up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some
open spaces, and it was all dark-colored and saturated with water. There
were some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there;
but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my
way home,