the Thoreau Log.
6 March 1849. Lincoln, Mass.

Thoreau lectures on “White Beans and Walden Pond” at the Centre School House for the Lincoln Lyceum (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 168).

Lincoln, Mass. James Lorin Chapin (1824-1902) writes in his journal:

  This evening I have been to the Lyceum here in Lincoln and have listened to a curious lecture from Henry D. Thoreau of Concord. Subject, His reflections when hoing beans when he lived alone in the woods near Walden Pond in Concord.  He had a strange mixture of sense and folly of poetry and ethics. He touched on the pond the woods, the rail road, the cars, the church bells, the distant roar of cannon, the sound of martial music, and the conversation of travellers on the highway, and more fully on the morals of hoing beans. I was very much interested with the lecture, perhaps not so much with the logic and beauty of the subject as the novelty of style.
(MS, Miscellaneous Journals, Archives/Special Collections, Lincoln (Mass.) Public Library)

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