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