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CHAPTER 1 - PART 4 Economy
As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion
about them; there is not always a positive advance.
The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share
and numerous succeeding investments in them.
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious
things.
They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already
but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York.
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but
Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate Either is in such
a predicament as the man who was earnest to
be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one
end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say As if the main
object were to talk fast and not to talk
sensibly We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks
nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad,
flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
After all, the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most
important messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round eating
locusts and wild honey I doubt if Flying
Childers ever carried a peck of corn to mill.
One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might
take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the country" But I am wiser than that.
I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot.
I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first The distance is thirty
miles; the fare ninety cents That is almost a day's wages.
I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road.
Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate
by the week together You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive
there some time tomorrow, or possibly this
evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season.
Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day.
And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of
you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should
have to cut your acquaintance altogether.
Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with regard to the
railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long.
To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to
grading the whole surface of the planet.
Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and
spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for
nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the
depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and
the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run
over--and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy accident."
No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they
survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to
travel by that time.
This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a
questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the
Englishman who went to India to make a
fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a
poet.
He should have gone up garret at once "What!" exclaim a million Irishmen starting
up from all the shanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have built a
good thing?"
Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you might have done worse; but I wish, as
you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent your time better than digging in
this dirt.
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 *** mould, 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, though I held the plow myself.
My farm outgoes for the first season were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72-
1/2.
The seed corn was given me This never costs anything to speak of, unless you
plant more than enough I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen bushels of
potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn.
The yellow corn and turnips were too late to come to anything My whole income from
the farm was
.$ 23.44 Deducting the outgoes 14.72-1/2
-------- There are left $ 8.71-1/2
beside 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
today, 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.
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.
Beside 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.
I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the
keepers of men, the former are so much the freer.
Men and oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen will
be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the larger.
Man does some of his part of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it is
no boy's play.
Certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of
philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals.
True, there never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am
I certain it is desirable that there should be.
However, I should never have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board for any work
he might do for me, for fear I should become a horseman or a herdsman merely; and
if society seems to be the gainer by so
doing, are we certain that what is one man's gain is not another's loss, and that
the stable-boy has equal cause with his master to be satisfied?
Granted that some public works would not have been constructed without this aid, and
let man share the glory of such with the ox and horse; does it follow that he could not
have accomplished works yet more worthy of himself in that case?
When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or artistic, but luxurious and
idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable that a few do all the exchange
work with the oxen, or, in other words, become the slaves of the strongest.
Man thus not only works for the animal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he
works for the animal without him.
Though we have many substantial houses of brick or stone, the prosperity of the
farmer is still measured by the degree to which the barn overshadows the house.
This town is said to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses
hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in its public buildings; but there are very few
halls for free worship or free speech in this county.
It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract
thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves?
How much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East!
Towers and temples are the luxury of princes.
A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or
marble, except to a trifling extent.
To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered?
In Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any hammering stone.
Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of
themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave.
What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?
One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the
moon.
I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar
grandeur.
More sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest man's field than a
hundred-gated Thebes that has wandered farther from the true end of life.
The religion and civilization which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid
temples; but what you might call Christianity does not.
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only.
It buries itself alive.
As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that
so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb
for some ambitious ***, whom it would
have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the
dogs. I might possibly invent some excuse for
them and him, but I have no time for it.
As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world
over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank.
It costs more than it comes to.
The mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter.
Mr. Balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the back of his Vitruvius,
with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to Dobson & Sons, stonecutters.
When the thirty centuries begin to look down on it, mankind begin to look up at it.
As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town
who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard
the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I
think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.
Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East--to know who built
them.
For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them--who were
above such trifling. But to proceed with my statistics.
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 $13.34.
The expense of food for eight months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, the
time when these estimates were made, though I lived there more than two years--not
counting potatoes, a little green corn, and
some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of what was on hand
at the last date--was
Rice....................$ 1.73-1/2 Molasses................. 1.73
Cheapest form of the saccharine. Rye meal................. 1.04-3/4
Indian meal.............. 0.99-3/4 Cheaper than rye.
Pork..................... 0.22 All experiments which failed:
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
$8.40-3/4 Oil and some household utensils.......2.00
So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending, which
for the most part were done out of the house, and their bills have not yet been
received--and these are all and more than
all the ways by which money necessarily goes out in this part of the world--were
House............................$ 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, 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 love 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 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.
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 bottleful,
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 bottleful 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, aquae 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 would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a
cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a
beggarly account of empty boxes?
That is Spaulding's furniture. I could never tell from inspecting such a
load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man or a poor one; the owner always
seemed poverty-stricken.
Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are.
Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one
shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor.
Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviae: at last
to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned?
It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not
move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging them--dragging
his trap.
He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap.
The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free.
No wonder man has lost his elasticity.
How often he is at a dead set! "Sir, if I may be so bold, what do you mean
by a dead set?"
If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much
that he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his kitchen furniture and all the
trumpery which he saves and will not burn,
and he will appear to be harnessed to it and making what headway he can.
I think that the man is at a dead set who has got through a knot-hole or gateway
where his sledge load of furniture cannot follow him.
I cannot but feel compassion when I hear some trig, compact-looking man, seemingly
free, all girded and ready, speak of his "furniture," as whether it is insured or
not.
"But what shall I do with my furniture?"-- My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider's
web then.
Even those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you
will find have some stored in somebody's barn.
I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great
deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from long housekeeping, which
he has not the courage to burn; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle.
Throw away the first three at least.
It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I
should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.
When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all--
looking like an enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his neck--I have
pitied him, not because that was his all, but because he had all that to carry.
If I have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it be a light one and do not nip
me in a vital part.
But perchance it would be wisest never to put one's paw into it.
I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no
gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in.
The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my
furniture or fade my carpet; and if he is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it
still better economy to retreat behind some
curtain which nature has provided, than to add a single item to the details of
A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time
to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on
the sod before my door.
It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil. Not long since I was present at the auction
of a deacon's effects, for his life had not been ineffectual:--
"The evil that men do lives after them."
As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his
father's day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm.
And now, after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things
were not burned; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an
auction, or increasing of them.
The neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and carefully
transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie there till their estates are
settled, when they will start again.
When a man dies he kicks the dust.
The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us,
for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have
the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not.
Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a "busk," or "feast of first
fruits," as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians?
"When a town celebrates the busk," says he, "having previously provided themselves with
new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they
collect all their worn out clothes and
other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town
of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions
they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire.
After having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is
extinguished.
During this fast they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion
whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all
malefactors may return to their town."
"On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new
fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied
with the new and pure flame."
They then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance and sing for three days, "and the
four following days they receive visits and rejoice with their friends from neighboring
towns who have in like manner purified and prepared themselves."
The Mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of every fifty-two
years, in the belief that it was time for the world to come to an end.
I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it,
"outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," than this, and I have no
doubt that they were originally inspired
directly from Heaven to do thus, though they have no Biblical record of the
revelation.
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 though you trade
in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.
As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as I could
fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich
carpets or other fine furniture, or
delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet.
If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things, and
who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit.
Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because
it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say.
Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might
advise to work twice as hard as they do-- work till they pay for themselves, and get
their free papers.
For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of
any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one.
The laborer's day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote
himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who
speculates from month to month, has no
respite from one end of the year to the other.
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.