Both his poetry and prose, to use an Emersonian expression,
"sail the seas with God."
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 1817-1862
[Illustration: HENRY DAVID THOREAU]
LIFE.--Henry David Thoreau, America's poet-naturalist, was born in 1817 at
Concord, Massachusetts. He was one of the youngest of the famous Concord
group of writers and the only one who could claim Concord as his birthplace
He was a lifelong student of nature, and he loved the district around
Concord. As a boy he knew its woods and streams because he had hunted and
fished in them. After his graduation from Harvard in 1837, he substituted
for the fishing rod and gun, the spyglass, microscope, measuring tape, and
surveying instruments, and continued his out-of-door investigations.
[Illustration: THOREAU'S SPY-GLASS, FLUTE, ETC.]
He taught school with his brother and lectured, but in order to add to his
slender income also did work unusual for a Harvard graduate, such as odd
jobs of carpentering, planting trees, and surveying. He also assisted his
father in his business of pencil making, and together they made the best
pencils in New England. Whatever he undertook, he did thoroughly.
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