WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Henry David ThoreauЧитать онлайн книгу.
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