teeth for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the
same and succeeded. The human race is interested in these experiments,
though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their
thirds in mills, may be alarmed.
My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the rest cost me nothing
of which I have not rendered an account, consisted of a bed, a table, a
desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of
tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a
wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a
jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor
that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty
of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for
taking them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand
without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher
would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up
country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly
account of empty boxes? That is Spaulding’s furniture. I could never
tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so called
rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken.
Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load
looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one
shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we
_move_ ever but to get rid of our furniture, our _exuviæ_; at last to
go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be
burned? It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man’s
belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are
cast without dragging them,—dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox that
left his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to
be free. No wonder man has lost his elasticity. How often he is at a
dead set! “Sir, if I may be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?”
If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he
owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his
kitchen furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will not
burn, and he will appear to be harnessed to it and making what headway
he can. I think that the man is at a dead set who has got through a
knot hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannot follow
him. I cannot but feel compassion when I hear some trig,
compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his
“furniture,” as whether it is insured or not. “But what shall I do with
my furniture?” My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider’s web then.
Even those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire
more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody’s barn. I look
upon England to-day as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great
deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from long housekeeping,
which he has not the courage to burn; great trunk, little trunk,
bandbox and bundle. Throw away the first three at least. It would
surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk,
and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.
When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained
his all—looking like an enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of
his neck—I have pitied him, not because that was his all, but because
he had all _that_ to carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will take
care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. But
perchance it would be wisest never to put one’s paw into it.
I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for
I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing
that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of
mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet, and if he
is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to
retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided, than to add a
single item to the details of housekeeping. A lady once offered me a
mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare
within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my
feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of
evil.
Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon’s effects, for
his life had not been ineffectual:—
“The evil that men do lives after them.”
As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate
in his father’s day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And now,
after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these
things
