However,if one designs to construct a dwelling-house,it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness,lest after all he find himself in a workhouse,a labyrinth without a clue,a museum,an almshouse,a prison,or a splendid mausoleum instead.Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary.I have seen Penobscot Indians,in this town,living in tents of thin cotton cloth,while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them,and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind.Formerly,when how to get my living honestly,with freedom left for my proper pursuits,was a question which vexed me even more than it does now,for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous,I used to see a large box by the railroad,six feet long by three wide,in which the laborers locked up their tools at night;and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar,and,having bored a few auger holes in it,to admit the air at least,get into it when it rained and at night,and hook down the lid,and so have freedom in his love,and in his soul be free.This did not appear the worst,nor by any means a despicable alternative.You could sit up as late as you pleased,and,whenever you got up,go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent.Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this.I am far from jesting.Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity,but it cannot so be disposed of.A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race,that lived mostly out of doors,was once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands.Gookin,who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony,writing in 1674,says,“The best of their houses are covered very neatly,tight and warm,with barks of trees,slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up,and made into great flakes,with pressure of weighty timber,when they are green....The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush,and are also indifferently tight and warm,but not so good as the former....Some I have seen,sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad....I have often lodged in their wigwams,and found them as warm as the best English houses.”He adds that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats,and were furnished with various utensils.The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string.Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most,and taken down and put up in a few hours;and every family owned one,or its apartment in one.
In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best,and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants;but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that,though the birds of the air have their nests,and the foxes their holes,and the savages their wigwams,in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter.In the large towns and cities,where civilization especially prevails,the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole.The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all,become indispensable summer and winter,which would buy a village of Indian wigwams,but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live.I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning,but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little,while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it;nor can he,in the long run,any better afford to hire.But,answers one,by merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savage's.An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars (these are the country rates)entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries,spacious apartments,clean paint and paper,Rumford fireplace,back plastering,Venetian blinds,copper pump,spring lock,a commodious cellar,and many other things.But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized man,while the savage,who has them not,is rich as a savage?If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,-and I think that it is,though only the wise improve their advantages,-it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly;and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it,immediately or in the long run.An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars,and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life,even if he is not encumbered with a family,-estimating the pecuniary value of every man's labor at one dollar a day,for if some receive more,others receive less;-so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned.If we suppose him to pay a rent instead,this is but a doubtful choice of evils.Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?