He's None the Worse for That (1866)
AUTHOR: Alcott, William Andrus
PUBLICATION: “He's None the Worse for That.” The Good Templar of New England Vol. I no. 5 (Jan 1866): n.pag. (col. 1). ProQuest, American Periodicals database. Subscription access.
KEYWORDS: diet, dress, environment, food
---. The Journals of Bronson Alcott
---. New Connecticut
---. “Orphic Sayings”
---. “Philosophemes”
---. Tablets
---. The Home-book of Life and Health
---. The Laws of Health
---. The Mother in Her Family
---. “Temperance in All Things”
---. The Young Mother
Allen, James Madison. Essays: Philosophical and Practical
Anderson, Martha Jane. Social Gathering Dialogue
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Farming”
Graham, Sylvester. Lectures on the Science of Human Life
Greeley, Horace. “The Bases of Character”
Hecker, Isaac Thomas. Aspirations of Nature
Jackson, James Caleb. The Gluttony Plague
Kellogg, John Harvey. The Living Temple
Mussey, Reuben Dimond. Health: Its Friends and Its Foes
Sinclair, Upton. The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair
---. Good Health and How We Won It
Thoreau, Henry David. Journals
---. Walden
SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):
This short poem values a life that is simple and humble in all respects: coarse food, simple dress, plain housing, honest work, and moral uprightness. The brevity of the poem and Alcott's use of simple iambic tetrameter support his celebration of a life in which “conscience guides the heart and hand.” Such a life, the poem claims, is the life enjoyed by the “sons of toil.” Such a man, in turn, “tends to the loom, and tills the land” while wearing but a “homespun suit,” just as his wife does without “satin gowns of black or green.” A “humble cot” is all such a family needs. As the poem's third and final stanza states, “True worth is not a thing of dress, / Of splendour, wealth, or classic lore; / Would that these trappings we loved less, / And clung to honest worth the more.” As the poem's title suggests, people who live so live best.