THE EARLY IDEALS 
2.35 
and no markets; no one provides for us, or preserves 
for us, save ourselves. Out of the summer’s overplus, 
we store with our own hands for winter; and nought 
that we have not so stored shall we enjoy. No great 
engines are there to haul tons of grain to us across 
thousand-mile spaces, if our fields yield not their in¬ 
crease. The lean years and the fat years are verily 
lean and fat; and our granaries and bins and barrels 
hold literally our living and our all. Both the linen 
and the woolen cloth is homespun and home woven; 
home brewed is the beer, home grown are all the roots 
and herbs to be steeped into messes for the fevers and 
distempers which, please Heaven! may pass us by. 
Here are the industrious bees, warm within their hives, 
where they have stored our sugar; indeed, there is no 
end to the enumeration, and all that we possess we do 
actually first produce, of a truth. 
For diversion and amusement we are almost as de¬ 
pendent upon this same home establishment as for the 
sterner necessities. We feast at our own table, on 
our own ox and boar and fowl, we drink our homely, 
pleasant beverages and smoke our own tobacco, and we 
play the old fireside games; or from our twittering 
spinets or grander tinkling harpsichords we draw the 
polite little melodies of our delight; or perhaps we 
broider dexterously at our frames, endless flocks of 
birds and beasts and garlands of flowers as never were. 
