Thoreau lectures on “White Beans and Walden Pond” at Worcester City Hall (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 182).
Worcester, Mass. The Worcester Daily Spy publishes a notice of Thoreau’s lecture of the same day and a review of his lecture of 27 April:
[We] are free to say, that in hearing the second lecture, we were disappointed. We had looked for a bold, original thinker, who would give us the results of his observations and reflections, with a vigor, freshness, and independence, which would win our respect and admiration, even though it might not convince us. We said that we were disappointed. This lecturer evidently is not deficient in ability, and might very probably attain to a more respectable rank, if he were satisfied to be himself, Henry D. Thoreau, and not aim to be Ralph Waldo Emerson or any body else. But, so far as manner, at least was concerned, the lecture was a better imitation of emerson than we should have thought possible, even with two year’s seclusion to practice in. In the ideas, too, there was less of originality than we had looked for, and recollections of Carlyle as well as of Emerson, with occasional interludes, in which the lecturer gave us glimpses of himself beneath the panoply in which he was enshrouded, and we are perverse enough to confess ourself better pleased with him as Thoreau than as Emerson, so far as these opportunities afforded us the means of judging. We are no admirers of the cynicism, whether real or affected, of the school to which we suppose the lecturer belongs. It strikes us that one who is capable of such high enjoyments, as they sometimes profess, from the contemplation of the works of creation in their lower manifestations, might, if his mind were rightly constituted, find increased pleasure in communion with the last, best, and highest subject of creative power, even though in most individual cases, it may fail to come up to the standard for which it was designed.
The lecturer stated that he never had more than three letters that were worth the postage. That might possibly be accounted for by his limited correspondence, or by the character of his correspondents, or even by the relative estimate which he may put upon the amount of the root of evil which is required to pay the postage of a letter. At any rate, there is one consolation for him in the case—that probably another year will not pass away without a reduction in the rates of letter postage . . .
The third lecture of this course will be given at Brinley Hall, this evening . . . We hope our readers will go to the lecture, this evening, and hear for themselves. We would not miss going on any consideration of an ordinary character. We are to have, among other things, the lecturer’s experience, during his two years’ seclusion from the world, in raising beans! Farmers and horticulturalists will probably be elevated upon the philosophical influence of that avocation.
