272 
WALDEN* 
My house was not empty though I was gone. It was as 
if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I 
and Fire that lived there; and commonly my house¬ 
keeper proved trustworthy. One day, however, as I was 
splitting wood, I thought that I would just look in at the 
window and see if the house was not on fire; it was the 
only time I remember to have been particularly anxious 
on this score; so I looked and saw that a spark had 
caught my bed, and I went in and extinguished it when 
it had burned a place as big as my hand. But my house 
occupied so sunny and sheltered a position, and its roof 
was so low, that I could afford to let the fire go out in 
the middle of almost any winter day. 
The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third 
potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair 
left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the 
wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as 
man, and they survive the winter only because they are 
so careful to secure them. Some of my friends spoke 
as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze 
myself. The animal merely makes a bed, which he 
warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, 
having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious 
apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, 
makes that his bed, in which he can move about divest¬ 
ed of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of sum¬ 
mer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows 
even admit the light, and with a lamp lengthen out the 
day. Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and 
saves a little time for the fine arts. Though, when I 
had been exposed to the rudest blasts a long time, my 
whole body began to grow torpid, when I reached the 
genial atmosphere of my house I soon recovered my 
