Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/229

 asT.30.] TO HORACE GREELEY. 205

TO HORACE GREELEY (AT NEW YORK).

CONCORD, May 19, 1848.

MY FRIEND GKEELEY, I have to-day re ceived from you fifty dollars. It is five years that I have been maintaining myself entirely by manual labor, not getting a cent from any other quarter or employment. Now this toil has occupied so few days, perhaps a single month, spring and fall each, that I must have had more leisure than any of my brethren for study and literature. I have done rude work of all kinds. From July, 1845, to September, 1847, I lived by myself in the forest, in a fairly good cabin, plastered and warmly covered, which I built myself. There I earned all I needed and kept to my own affairs. During that time my weekly outlay was but seven-and-twenty cents ; and I had an abundance of all sorts. Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so ; I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.

Why should the scholar make a constant com plaint that his fate is specially hard ? We are