WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Henry David Thoreau
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keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the
fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary
ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the
caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for
clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall
be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at
last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.
We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by
addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are
our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may
be stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker
garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but
our shirts are our liber or true bark, which cannot be removed without
girdling and so destroying the man. I believe that all races at some
seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a
man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark,
and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if
an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the
gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most
purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be
obtained at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be
bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, thick
pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a
pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for
sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal
cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of _his own
earning_, there will not be found wise men to do him reverence?
When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me
gravely, “They do not make them so now,” not emphasizing the “They” at
all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I
find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot
believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this
oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing
to myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it,
that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity _They_ are related
to _me_, and what authority they may have in an affair which affects me
so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal
mystery, and without any more emphasis of the “they,”—“It is true, they
did not make them so recently, but they do now.” Of what use this
measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the
breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on? We
worship not the Graces, nor the Parcæ, but Fashion. She spins and
weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a
traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I
sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in
this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a
powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that
they would not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would be
some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg
deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these
things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not
forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.
On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in
this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. At present men make
shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on
what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of
space or time, laugh at each other’s masquerade. Every generation
laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are
amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, as
much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands.
All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious
eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it, which restrain
laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be
taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that
mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannon ball rags are as becoming
as purple.
The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps
how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may
discover the particular figure which this generation requires today.
The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of
two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a
particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the
shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season
the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is
not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely
because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.
I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men
may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day
more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as
far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that
mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that
corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they
aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better
aim at something high.
As for a Shelter
, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life,
though there are instances of men having done without it for