Thoreau's early death was the direct result of his reckless lack of common prudence. That which made him live, in a literary way, curtailed his years. The man was improperly and imperfectly nourished, physically. Men who live alone do not cook any more than they have to: men and women, both, cook for emulation. That is to say, we work for each other, and we succeed only as we help each other.
Thoreau was such a pronounced individualist that he cared for no one but himself, and he cared for himself not at all. It is wife, children and home that teach a man prudence, and make him bank against the storm. "At Walden no one bothered me but the State," said Thoreau. If Thoreau had had a family and treated his household as he treated himself, that scorned thing, the State, would have stepped in and sent him to the workhouse, and his children to the Home for the Friendless.
If he had treated dumb animals as he treated himself, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would have interfered. The absence of social ties and of all responsibilities fixed in his peculiar temperament an indifference to hunger, heat, cold, wet, damp, and all bodily discomfort that classes the man with the flagellants. He tells of whole days when he ate nothing but berries and drank only cold water; and at other times of how he walked all day in a soaking rain and went to bed at night, supperless, under a pine-tree. Emerson records the fact that on long tramps Thoreau would carry only a chunk of plum-cake for food, because it was rich and contained condensed nutriment.
The question is sometimes asked, "How can one eat his cake and keep it too?" but this does not refer to plum-cake.
A few years of plum-cake, cold mince-pie and continual wet feet will put the petard under even the stoutest constitution.
During his shanty-life Thoreau was imperfectly nourished, and for the victim of malassimilation, tuberculosis hunts and needs no spyglass.
It is absurd for a man to make a god of his digestive apparatus, but it is just as bad to forget that the belly is as much the gift of God as the brain.
In childhood, Thoreau was frail and weak. Outdoor life gradually developed on his slight frame a splendid strength and a power to do and endure. He could outrun, outrow, outwalk any of his townsmen. In him developed the confidence of the athlete—the confidence of the athlete who dies young. Thoreau was an athlete, and he died as the athlete dieth. Irregular diet and continued exposure did their work—the vital powers became reduced, the man "caught cold," bronchitis followed, and the tuberculæ laughed.