Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by
some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual
expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil
near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes,
corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly
growing up to pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season
for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that it was
"good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on." I put no manure
whatever on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and
not expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it
all once. I got out several cords of stumps in plowing, which supplied
me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mold,
easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of
the beans there. The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood
behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the
remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the
plowing, tho I held the plow myself. My farm outgoes for the first
season were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72-1/2. The seed
corn was given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you
plant more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen
bushels of potatoes, besides some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn
and turnips were too late to come to anything. My whole income from
the farm was
$23.44
Deducting the outgoes 14.72-1/2
--------------
There are left $ 8.71-1/2
besides produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was
made of the value of $4.50--the amount on hand much more than
balancing a little grass which I did not raise. All things considered,
that is considering the importance of a man's soul and of to-day,
notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly
even because of its transient character I believe that that was doing
better than any farmer in Concord did that year.
[Footnote 31: From Chapters I and II of "Walden."]
The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which I
required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience
of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on
husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if one would live simply
and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate,
and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and
expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of
ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen
to plow it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to
manure the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work as it were
with his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and thus he would not
be tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to
speak impartially on this point, and as one not interested in the
success or failure of the present economical and social arrangements.
I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not
anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius,
which is a very crooked one, every moment. Besides being better off
than they already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed,
I should have been nearly as well off as before....
By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the
village in the meanwhile, for I have as many trades as fingers, I had
earned $13.34. The expense of food for eight months, namely, from July
4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates were made, tho I lived
there more than two years--not counting potatoes, a little green corn,
and some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of what
was on hand at the last date, was
Rice $1.73-1/2}
Molasses (Cheapest form }
of the saccharine) 1.73 }
Rye meal 1.04-3/4}
Indian meal (Cheaper }
than rye) 0.99-3/4}
Pork 0.22 }
Flour (Costs more than } All Experiments
Indian meal, both } which had failed
money and trouble) 0.88 }
Sugar 0.80 }
Lard 0.65 }
Apples 0.25 }
Dried apple 0.22 }
Sweet potatoes 0.10 }
One pumpkin 0.06 }
One watermelon 0.02 }
Salt 0.03 }
Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly
publish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers were
equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no better
in print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish for my
dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which
ravaged my beanfield--effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would
say--and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but tho it
afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I
saw that the longest use would not make that a good practise, however
it might seem to have your woodchucks ready drest by the village
butcher.
Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same date, tho little
can be inferred from this item, amounted to
$8.40-3/4
Oil and some household utensils 2.00
So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending,
which for the most part were done out of the house, and their bills
have not yet been received--and these are all and more than all the
ways by which money necessarily goes out in this part of the
world--were
House $28.12-1/2
Farm, one year 14.72-1/2
Food, eight months 8.74
Clothing, etc., eight months 8.40-3/4
Oil, etc., eight months 2.00
-------
In all $61.99-3/4
I address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to get.
And to meet this I have for farm produce sold
$23.44
Earned by day-labor 13.34
------
In all $36.78
which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of
$25.21-3/4 on the one side, this being very nearly the means with which I
started, and the measure of expenses to be incurred--and on the
other, besides the leisure and independence and health thus secured, a
comfortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy it.
These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they
may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value
also. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some account.
It appears from the above estimate that my food alone cost me in money
about twenty-seven cents a week. It was, for nearly two years after
this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little
salt pork, molasses, and salt, and my drink water. It was fit that I
should live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of
India. To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as
well state that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done, and
I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the
detriment of my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as I
have stated, a constant element, does not in the least affect a
comparative statement like this.
I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly
little trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in this latitude;
that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain
health and strength. I have made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory
on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (_Portulaca
Oleracea_) which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. I give
the Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. And pray
what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary
noons, than sufficient number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled,
with the addition of salt? Even the little variety which I used was a
yielding to the demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have
come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of
necessaries, but for want of luxuries; and I know a good woman who
thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water
only.
The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject rather from an
economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not venture to put
my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder.
Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes,
which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end of a
stick of timber sawed off in building my house; but it was wont to get
smoked and to have a piny flavor. I tried flour also; but have at last
found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable.
In cold weather it was no little amusement to bake several small
loaves of this in succession, tending and turning them as carefully as
an Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I
ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other
noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in
cloths. I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of
bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back to
the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, when
from the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and
refinement of this diet, and traveling gradually down in my studies
through that accidental souring of the dough, which, it is supposed,
taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations
thereafter, till I came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staff
of life.
For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor
of my hands, and I found that by working about six weeks in a year, I
could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as
well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have
thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in
proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I was
obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly,
and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good
of my fellow men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I
have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get
under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the
devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what
is called a good business. When formerly I was looking about to see
what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the
wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I
thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I
could do, and its small profits might suffice--for my greatest skill
has been to want but little--so little capital it required, so little
distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my
acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I
contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills
all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter
carelessly dispose of them; so to keep the flocks of Admetus. I also
dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to
such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city,
by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that trade curses
everything it handles; and tho you trade in messages from heaven, the
whole curse of trade attaches to the business....
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to
maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if
we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations
are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that
a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he
sweats easier than I do....
The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, was
a tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions in the
summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after
passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this
more substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward
settling in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of
crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was
suggestive as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to
take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its
freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I
sat, even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, "An
abode-without birds is like a meat without seasoning." Such was not my
abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by
having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was not
only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and
the orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the
forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager, the wood-thrush,
the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill,
and many others.
I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half
south of the village of Concord, and somewhat higher than it, in the
midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and about
two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord battle
ground; but I was so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a
mile off, like the rest covered with wood, was my most distant
horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond it
imprest me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom
far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it
throwing off its mighty clothing of mist, and here and there, by
degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface were
revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in
every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some
nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the trees
later into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear;
nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so
sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to
cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and
reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, then to
get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to
the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be
able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men,
it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is
of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is
the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever."
Still we live meanly, like ants; tho the fable tells us that we were
long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is
error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for
its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is
frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more
than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and
lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your
affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead
of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb
nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are
the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand and one items to be
allowed for that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to
the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he
must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary, eat but one; instead
of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off
the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the
rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without
perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring
and the children cry--determined to make a day of it. Why should we
knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and
overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner,
situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are
safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves,
with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast
like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse
for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider
what kind of music they are like.