James Russell Lowell writes to George Bailey Loring:
I saw Thoreau last night, and it is exquisitely amusing to see how he imitates [Ralph Waldo] Emerson’s tone and manner. With my eyes shut I shouldn’t know them apart (Victorian Knight Errant, 18-19).
David Greene Haskins writes of Thoreau:
I happened to meet Thoreau in Emerson’s study at Concord. I think it was the first time we had come together after leaving college. I was quite startled by the transformation that had taken place in him. His short figure and general caste of countenance were, of course, unchanged; but, in his manners, in the tones and inflections of his voice, in his modes of expression, even in the hesitations and pauses of his speech, he had become the counterpart of Mr. Emerson. Mr. Thoreau’s college voice bore no resemblance to Mr. Emerson’s, and was so familiar to my ear that I could readily have identified him by it in the dark. I was so much struck with the change, and with the resemblance in the respects referred to between Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau, that I remember to have taken the opportunity as we sat near together, talking, of listening to their conversation with closed eyes, and to have been unable to determine with certainty which was speaking. It was a notable instance of unconscious imitation.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson: His Maternal Ancestors, 121-122)
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal in 1864:
Mrs Brown [Lucy Jackson Brown] who boarded with the Thoreaus, was one day talking with Mrs T. of the remarks made by many persons on the resemblances between Mr Emerson & Henry in manners, looks, voice, & thought. Henry spoke like Mr E. & walked like him &c. “O yes,” said his mother, “Mr Emerson had been a good deal with David Henry, and it was very natural should catch his ways.”
(The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 15:490)
