Thoreau submits an essay on the prompt “The ways in which a man’s style may be said to offend against simplicity” for a class assignment given him on 13 November.

Thoreau is also given the prompt for his next essay, “At what period of life or in what kind of pursuits are we most exposed to be absorbed in the present? And how are our minds affected by being thus engrossed?” due on 18 December (Thoreau’s Harvard Years, part 2:10; Early Essays and Miscellanies, 24-6).