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1I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food,
2even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have
3made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (Portulaca oleracea) which I
4gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. I give the Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. And pray
5what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green
6sweet-corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Even the little variety which I used was a yielding to the demands of
7appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries,
8but for want of luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking
9water only. The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject rather from an economic than a dietetic point of
10view, and he will not venture to put my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder. Bread I at first
11made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end
12of 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
13flour also; but have at last found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it
14was no little amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending and turning them as carefully as an
15Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like
16that of other noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths. I made a study of the
17ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive days
18and first invention of the unleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and
19refinement of this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough which,
20it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter, till I came to "good,
21sweet, wholesome bread," the staff of life. Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its
22cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal fire,--some precious bottle-full, I suppose, first
23brought over in the Mayflower, did the business for America, and its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in
24cerealian billows over the land,--this seed I regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one
25morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident I discovered that even this was not
26indispensable,--for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process,--and I have gladly omitted it since,
27though most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly people
28prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going without
29it for a year am still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottle-full in
30my pocket, which would sometimes pop and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more respectable
31to omit it. Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. Neither did I
32put any sal soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. It would seem that I made it according to the recipe which
33Marcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before Christ. "Panem depsticium sic facito. Manus mortariumque bene
34lavato. Farinam in mortarium indito, aquæ paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene subegeris, defingito,
35coquitoque sub testu." Which I take to mean--"Make kneaded bread thus. Wash your hands and trough well. Put the meal
36into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it
37under a cover," that is, in a baking-kettle. Not a word about leaven. But I did not always use this staff of life. At
38one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than a month. Every New Englander might easily
39raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for
40them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the
41shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any. For the most part the farmer gives to his
42cattle and hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is at least no more wholesome, at a greater cost,
43at the store. I saw that I could easily raise my bushel or two of rye and Indian corn, for the former will grow on the
44poorest land, and the latter does not require the best, and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and pork;
45and if I must have some concentrated sweet, I found by experiment that I could make a very good molasses either of
46pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out a few maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these
47were growing I could use various substitutes beside those which I have named. "For," as the Forefathers sang,-- "we can
48make liquor to sweeten our lips Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips." Finally, as for salt, that grossest of
49groceries, to obtain this might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did without it altogether, I
50should probably drink the less water. I do not learn that the Indians ever troubled themselves to go after it. Thus I
51could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to
52get clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a farmer's family,--thank Heaven there is so much
53virtue still in man; for I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man
54to the farmer;--and in a new country, fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still to squat,
55I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land I cultivated was sold--namely, eight dollars and eight
56cents. But as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it. There is a certain class of
57unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at
58the root of the matter at once,--for the root is faith,--I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails.
59If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to hear of
60experiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear,
61using his teeth for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The human race is interested in these
62experiments, though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in mills, may be alarmed.
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