where he might grow his corn and vegetables. In his book "Walden" Thoreau describes how he spent his day during that first year. He would rise very early in the morning in summer-time and take his bath in the pond, and before the sun was high and the dew lay on everything he would attend to the bean-field he loved so much and hoe between the long green rows. After this he would do his housework, which he called a pleasant pastime. He had only a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass (three inches across), a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a frying-pan, a wash-bowl, one or two jugs, one cup, and a lamp.
When his floor was dirty, he merely set all his furniture out of doors on the grass, dashed water on the floor of his hut and sprinkled it with white sand, and then with a broom swept it clean. By the time other people were just getting up his house was dry again and his work finished.
The first year at Walden he worked a great deal in his garden. Then he had his cooking to do, and he studied very carefully the art of making bread, baking it at first out of doors on the end of a stick of timber over an open fire. He made experiments and discoveries with foods, cooking odd wild plants and weeds. He proved that a man in that land could support himself on what he grew. He could, for instance, grow his own rye and Indian corn and grind
