But how do the poor minority fare?Perhaps it will be found that just in proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above the savage,others have been degraded below him.The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another.On the one side is the palace,on the other are the almshouse and “silent poor.”The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic,and it may be were not decently buried themselves.The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam.It is a mistake to suppose that,in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist,the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages.I refer to the degraded poor,not now to the degraded rich.To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere border our railroads,that last improvement in civilization;where I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties,and all winter with an open door,for the sake of light,without any visible,often imaginable,wood-pile,and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery,and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked.It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished.Such too,to a greater or less extent,is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England,which is the great workhouse of the world.Or I could refer you to Ireland,which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map.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 it was degraded by contact with the civilized man.Yet I have no doubt that that people's rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers.Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization.I hardly need refer now to the laborers in our Southern States who produce the staple exports of this country,and are themselves a staple production of the South.But to confine myself to those who are said to be in moderate circumstances.
Most men appear never to have considered what a house is,and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him,or,gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin,complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown!It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have,which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for.Shall we always study to obtain more of these things,and not sometimes to be content with less?Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach,by precept and example,the necessity of the young man's providing a certain number of superflous glow-shoes,and umbrellas,and empty guest chambers for empty guests,before he dies?Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab's or the Indian's?When I think of the benefactors of the race,whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven,bearers of divine gifts to man,I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels,any car-load of fashionable furniture.Or what if I were to allow-would it not be a singular allowance?-that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab's,in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors!At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it,and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole,and not leave her morning's work undone.Morning work!By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon,what should be man's morning work in this world?I had three pieces of limestone on my desk,but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily,when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still,and I threw them out the window in disgust.How,then,could I have a furnished house?I would rather sit in the open air,for no dust gathers on the grass,unless where man has broken ground.
It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.The traveller who stops at the best houses,so called,soon discovers this,for the publicans presume him to be a Sardanapalus,and if he resigned himself to their tender mercies he would soon be completely emasculated.I think that in the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience,and it threatens without attaining these to become no better than a modern drawing room,with its divans,and ottomans,and sun-shades,and a hundred other oriental things,which we are taking west with us,invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the Celestial Empire,which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names of.I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart,with a free circulation,than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.