Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal:
My good Henry Thoreau made this else solitary afternoon sunny with his simplicity and clear perception. How comic is simplicity in this double-dealing, quacking world. Everything that boy says makes merry with society, though nothing can be graver than his meaning. I told him he should write out the history of his college life as Carlyle has his tutoring. We agreed that seeing the stars through a telescope would be worth all the astronomical lectures. Then he described Mr. Quimby’s electrical lecture here, and the experiment of the shock, and added that “College Corporations are very blind to the fact that that twinge in the elbow is worth all the lecturing.”
(The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 5:453-4)
