Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the
Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is
only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within
it which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people.
Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings
will have to serve that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a
cannon-ball, rags are as becoming as purple.

  The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns
keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they
may discover the particular figure which this generation requires
today. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely
whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more
or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other
lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of
a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively,
tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not
barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.

  I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which
men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming
every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at,
since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is,
not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably,
that corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what
they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they
had better aim at something high.

  As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of
life, though there are instances of men having done without it for
long periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing says that
"the Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over
his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow... in
a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to
it in any woollen clothing." He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he
adds, "They are not hardier than other people." But, probably, man did
not live long on the earth without discovering the convenience which
there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have
originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the
family; though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those
climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter
or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for
a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was
formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a
wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, and a row of them cut or
painted on the bark of a tree signified that so many times they had
camped. Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must
seek to narrow his world and wall in a space such as fitted him. He
was at first bare and out of doors; but though this was pleasant
enough in serene and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and
the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have
nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste to clothe
himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according to the
fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place
of warmth, or comfort, first of warmth, then the warmth of the
affections.

  We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some
enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every
child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay
outdoors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse,
having an instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with
which, when young, he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a
cave? It was the natural yearning of that portion, any portion of
our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us. From the
cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark and boughs,
of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and
shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we know not what it is to live
in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we
think. From the hearth the field is a great distance. It would be
well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without
any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did
not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long.
Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in
dovecots.

  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