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

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.

      Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the _spiritus_ which fills

      its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal

      fire,—some precious bottle-full, I suppose, first brought over in the

      Mayflower, did the business for America, and its influence is still

      rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows over the land,—this

      seed I regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at

      length one morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which

      accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable,—for my

      discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process,—and I have

      gladly omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me

      that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly

      people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not

      to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it 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 my pocket, which would

      sometimes pop and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is

      simpler and more respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than

      any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. Neither

      did I put any sal soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. It

      would seem that I made it according to the recipe which Marcus Porcius

      Cato gave about two centuries before Christ. “Panem depsticium sic

      facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium indito,

      aquæ paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene subegeris,

      defingito, coquitoque sub testu.” Which I take to mean—“Make kneaded

      bread thus. Wash your hands and trough well. Put the meal into the

      trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. When you have

      kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it under a cover,” that is, in a

      baking-kettle. Not a word about leaven. But I did not always use this

      staff of life. At one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw

      none of it for more than a month.

      Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this

      land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating

      markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence

      that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and

      hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any. For the

      most part the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the grain of his own

      producing, and buys flour, which is at least no more wholesome, at a

      greater cost, at 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 poorest

      land, and the latter does not require the best, and grind them in a

      hand-mill, and so do without rice and pork; and if I must have some

      concentrated sweet, I found by experiment that I could make a very good

      molasses either of pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to

      set out a few maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these

      were growing I could use various substitutes beside those which I have

      named. “For,” as the Forefathers sang,—

      “we can make liquor to sweeten our lips

      Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips.”

      Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this might

      be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did without it

      altogether, I should probably drink the less water. I do not learn that

      the Indians ever troubled themselves to go after it.

      Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was

      concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get

      clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a

      farmer’s family,—thank Heaven there is so much virtue still in man; for

      I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and

      memorable as that from the man to the farmer;—and in a new country,

      fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still

      to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the

      land I cultivated was sold—namely, eight dollars and eight cents. But

      as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by

      squatting on it.

      There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such

      questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and

      to strike at the root of the matter at once,—for the root is faith,—I

      am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they

      cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say.

      For my part, I am glad to hear of experiments of this kind being tried;

      as that a young man tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on

      the ear, using his teeth for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the

      same and succeeded. The human race is interested in these experiments,

      though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their

      thirds in mills, may be alarmed.

      My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the rest cost me nothing

      of which I have not rendered an account, consisted of a bed, a table, a

      desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of

      tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a

      wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a

      jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor

      that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty

      of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for

      taking them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand

      without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher