Thoreau submits a college essay on the prompt “Compare some of the Methods of gaining or exercising public Influence: as, Lectures, the Pulpit, Associations, the Press, Political Office,” for a class assignment given him on 17 February (Thoreau’s Harvard Years, part 2:13; Early Essays and Miscellanies, 86-88; MS, Abernethy Collection of American Literature. Middlebury College Special Collections, Middlebury, Vt.).