68 
WALDEN. 
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 un¬ 
leavened 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 bottle-full, I sup¬ 
pose, first brought over in the Mayflower, did the bus¬ 
iness for America, and its influence is still rising, swell¬ 
ing, 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 discov¬ 
eries were not by the synthetic but analytic process, — 
and I have gladly omitted it since, though most house¬ 
wives 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 cli¬ 
mates and circumstances. Neither did I put any sal 
