It’s always nice, halfway through any endeavor, to have a little break.
This brief foray to town and society lies between The Bean-Field and The Ponds. It also contains a vivid passage about walking home in the dark, just case there aren’t enough good things to say about the village.
Cramer notes that the “chapter is a parody on the idea of a Vanity Fair, a place of vain and frivolous pursuits, coined in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.” The humor is certainly easy to find in this chapter, complete with Thoreau admitting his penchant for escaping company, “for I did not stand much about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a fence.”
The mild digression about going home in the dark is couched in adventurous sailing language. Getting lost in the woods in the dark reads as a recommendation, with a closing allusion to the Book of Matthew,
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
It’s curious that Thoreau only briefly touches on his night in jail, which is a good enough story to tell again.
For reasons entirely archaic, men have to pay a tax when they vote. Thoreau had refused for years, now in 1846 in opposition to the annexation of Texas and declaration of war against Mexico.
One afternoon in July, he runs into Sam Staples, the local tax collector and jailer. Staples wants to clean up his records and retire, so he even offers to pay the tax himself. Thoreau of course refuses on principle, and they amiably walk to the jail cell together. That night, an unknown family member, probably Thoreau’s aunt, brings the back taxes to Staples’ home. The story goes that Staples had removed his boots and was comfortably tucked away for the night.
Thoreau’s resulting essay, Resistance to Civil Government, was delivered as a Lyceum lecture in 1848 and published by Elizabeth Peabody in 1849. It was later renamed Civil Disobedience.
In this chapter he closes with a quote from Confucius, “You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous…” pointing to a level of ethics and consciousness soon to be expanded in the Higher Laws chapter.
Reference
Cramer, Jeffery. Walden, A Fully Annotated Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2004.