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	Nov. 5. 1855 I hate the present modes of living and getting a living.  Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me.  I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.  The life which society proposes to me to live is so artificial and complex -- bolstered up on many weak supports, and sure to topple down at last -- that no man surely can ever be inspired to live it, and only "old fogies" ever praise it.  At best some think it their duty to live it.  I believe in the infinite joy and  satisfaction of helping myself  and others to the extent of my ability.  But what is the use in trying to live simply, raising what you eat, making what you wear, building what you inhabit, burning what you cut or dig, when those to whom you are allied insanely want and will have a thousand other things which neither you nor they can raise and nobody else, perchance, will pay for?  The fellow-man to whom you are oked is a steer that is ever bolting right the other way.  I was suggesting once to a man who was wincing under some of the consequences of our loose and expensive way of living, "But you might raise all your own potatoes, etc, etc."  We had often done it at our house and had some to sell.  At which he demurring, I said, setting it high, "You could raise twenty bushels even."  "But," said he, "I use thirty-five."  "How large is your family?"  "A wife and three infant children."  This was the real family;  I need not enumerate those who were hired to help eat the potatoes and waste them.  So he had to hire a man to raise his potatoes. Thus men invite the devil in at ever angle and then prate about the garden of Eden and the fall of man.  I know many children to whom I would fain make a present on some one of their birthdays, but the are so far gone in the luxury of presents -- have such perfect museums of costly ones -- that it would absorb my entire earnings for a year to buy them something which would not be beneath their notice.