ECONOMY. 
61 
I learned from the experience of both years, not being 
in the least awed by many celebrated works on hus¬ 
bandry, 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 plough 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 mo¬ 
ment. 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 com¬ 
mit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals. 
True, there never was and is not likely soon to be a 
