Thoreau's Experiment

Thoreau believed that we all live in a slave economy.  Everybody is too busy working hard to really enjoy themselves.  He believed that he has found the key to happiness by working only as much as needed.  Through his experiment, he had "proven" that it is possible to live both happily and simply.  However, I believe Thoreau needs to do a few more tests.  Here are a few ways that I thought Thoreau's experiment fell a little short.

Thoreau only had to provide for himself.  I would have like to have seen the results of the experiment if he had to feed a family.  In 1845, the average size of an American family was five people.  I wonder how this would have affected Thoreau's experiment.  At what age would he have had the children work in the field with him?  How much more work, if any, would he have had to do?

Also, Thoreau only lived along Walden Pond for two years.  I wonder if he could have sustained his lifestyle had he stayed there for a much longer time.  I mean this in two ways.  The first is: Could he have physically been able to sustain it?  Would it be possible for an elderly man to do everything Thoreau had to do?  Building and repairing the house, planting and harvesting crops.  These are all physically taxing labors, and one wonders at what age Thoreau would have been incapable of doing them.  The second way I mean the question is:  Would Thoreau have continued to be happy?  From his work, I get the sense that he could have, but I still would have liked to see how his reflections on his time at Walden Pond would have differed had he spent two decades there rather than two years.

I do not think that the lack of answers for these questions take away from Thoreau’s work.  I do not think they sound the death knoll for Thoreau’s thoughts.  Although Thoreau provided a conclusion to his work, I do not think he wanted to end it definitively.  He wanted us to stand up and think for ourselves, which is exactly what asking these questions does.  Were I to pose these questions to Thoreau himself, I think he would invite me to perform my own experiment.  Perhaps then, just as he did, I would discover the answers, and many others, for myself.