Where I Lived, and What I Lived For by Henry Thoreau

Author:Henry Thoreau
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141964294
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

Refuse shingles for roof and sides,

4 00

Laths,

1 25

Two second-hand

windows with glass,

2 43

One thousand old brick,

4 00

Two casks of lime,

2 40

That was high.

Hair,

0 31

More than I needed.

Mantle-tree iron,

0 15

Nails,

3 90

Hinges and screws,

0 14

Latch,

0 10

Chalk,

0 01

Transportation,

1 40

I carried a good part on my back.

_______

In all,

$28 12½

These are all the materials excepting the timber, stones and sand, which I claimed by squatter’s rights. I have also a small wood-shed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the house.

I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one.

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy – chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man – I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil’s attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth. At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student’s room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would be needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired, but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish. Those conveniences which the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they would with proper management on both sides. Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme, a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection – to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or

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