WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Henry David Thoreau

      Flour,................... 0.88 Costs more than Indian meal,

      both money and trouble.

      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 bean-field,—effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would

      say,—and devour him, partly for experiment’s sake; but though it

      afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I

      saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however

      it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village

      butcher.

      Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates, though

      little can be inferred from this item, amounted to

      $8.40¾

      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,................................ $ 28.12½

      Farm one year,.......................... 14.72½

      Food eight months,...................... 8.74

      Clothing, etc., eight months,........... 8.40¾

      Oil, &c., eight months,................. 2.00

      ——————

      In all,........................... $ 61.99¾

      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

      $25.21¾ 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,

      beside 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

      a 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 travelling gradually down in my