when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...still we live meanly like ants though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout...” (Thoreau, 66). Henry went off to Harvard and made his way along college nosing through books, and stayed much like a hermit. Though the experience was good for him, it gave him the chance to become acquainted with Harvard’s vast library, and introduced him to a few people he considered friends. There is even evidence of friendship in letters he wrote during college break, yet even they were considered distant friends. He wrote to one friend Charles Wyatt Rice, “It would afford me much pleasure if you would visit our good old town this vacation; in other words, myself.” By the end of college his mind was scholarly and the wide range books he was able to experience left him with great influence. The greater of which was Emerson’s Nature, “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society...the lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other.” Emerson appealed to Thoreau with his love for nature and simplicity. A trait that was much a part of Thoreau’s child-hood. Emerson’s work began to help Thoreau realize his own pursuits in nature were not in vain, but were truly the pinnacle of living, and his childhood was the era of his true living. He, in response to an inquiry for a class record, states “Though bodily I have been a member of Harvard University, heart and soul I have been far away among the scenes of my boyhood. Those hours that should have been devoted to study, have been spent in scouring the woods and exploring the lakes and streams of my native village.” With this Thoreau leaves to go back to his home town, where he will go back to the environment of his b...
