The shanties which everywhere line our railroads.

 

February 12.

Living all winter with an open door for light and no visible wood-pile, the forms of old and young permanently contracted through long shrinking from cold, and their faces pinched by want.

I have seen an old crone sitting bareheaded on the hillside, then in the middle of January, while it was raining and the ground was slowly thawing under her, knitting there.

Their undeveloped limbs and faculties, buds that cannot expand on account of the severity of the season.

There is no greater squalidness in any part of the world! 

Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before they were degraded by contact with the civilized man.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1852

The condition of the Irish. See August 23, 1851 ("I rarely pass the shanty in the woods, where human beings are lodged, literally, no better than pigs in a sty, — little children, a grown man and his wife, and an aged grandmother living this squalid life, squatting on the ground, — but I wonder if it can be indeed true that little Julia Riordan calls this place home, comes here to rest at night and for her daily food, — in whom ladies and gentlemen in the village take an interest. Of what significance are charity and almshouses? That there they live unmolested! in one sense so many degrees below the almshouse! beneath charity! It is admirable, — Nature against almshouses. A certain the wealth of nature, not poverty, it suggests. Not to identify health and contentment, aye, and independence, with the possession of this world’s goods! It is not wise to waste compassion on them."); September 24, 1851 ("The simple honesty of the Irish pleases me."); December 31, 1851 ("I observed this afternoon the old Irishwoman at the shanty in the woods, sitting out on the hillside, bare headed, in the rain and on the icy though thawing ground, knitting. She comes out, like the ground squirrel, at the least intimation of warmer weather. She will not have to go far to be buried, so close she lives to the earth, while I walk still in a greatcoat and under an umbrella. Such Irish as these are naturalizing themselves at a rapid rate, and threaten at last to displace the Yankees, as the latter have the Indians. The process of acclimation is rapid with them."); February 8, 1852 ("Carried a new cloak to Johnny Riordan. I found that the shanty was warmed by the simple social relations of the Irish. . . . One is not cold among his brothers and sisters. What if there is less fire on the hearth, if there is more in the heart! These Irish are not succeeding so ill after all."); February 17, 1852 ("I saw Patrick Riordan carrying home an armful of fagots from the woods to his shanty, on his shoulder. How much more interesting an event is that man's sup per who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, or perchance to steal, the fuel to cook it with ! His bread and meat must be sweet.") See also  Walden. (Economy pp 43 -45) "Granted that the majority are able outlast either to own or higher the modern house with all its improvements. . . . But how do the poor minority fair? . . . The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. . . . I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. . . . Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer now to the laborers of our Southern States who produce the staple exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production of the South.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023