Editing Henry David Thoreau (section)

===Return to Concord, 1837–1844===
The traditional professions open to college graduates—law, the church, business, medicine—did not interest Thoreau,<ref name="sattelmeyer">Sattelmeyer, Robert (1988). ''Thoreau's Reading: A Study in Intellectual History with Bibliographical Catalogue''. [http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/about2/S/Sattelmeyer_Robert/Reading2.pdf Chapter 2] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150908031952/http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/about2/S/Sattelmeyer_Robert/Reading2.pdf |date=September 8, 2015 }}. Princeton: Princeton University Press.</ref>{{Rp|25}} so in 1835 he took a leave of absence from Harvard, during which he taught at a school in [[Canton, Massachusetts]], living for two years at an earlier version of today's [[Concord's Colonial Inn|Colonial Inn]] in Concord. His grandfather owned the earliest of the three buildings that were later combined.<ref name=hudson311>''The History of Concord, Massachusetts, Vol. I, Colonial Concord, Volume 1'', Alfred Sereno Hudson (1904), p. 311</ref> After he graduated in 1837, Thoreau joined the faculty of the Concord public school, but he resigned after a few weeks rather than administer [[corporal punishment]].<ref name="sattelmeyer"/>{{Rp|25}} He and his brother John then opened the Concord Academy, a [[grammar school]] in Concord, in 1838.<!-- Concord Academy (1822–1863) is a different institution than Concord Academy (est. 1922). --><ref name="sattelmeyer" />{{Rp|25}} They introduced several progressive concepts, including nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school closed when John became fatally ill from [[tetanus]] in 1842 after cutting himself while shaving.<ref>Dean, Bradley P. "[http://thoreau.eserver.org/wfchron.html A Thoreau Chronology] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170620133904/http://thoreau.eserver.org/wfchron.html |date=June 20, 2017 }}".</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|jstor=3817844 |title=Barzillai Frost's Funeral Sermon on the Death of John Thoreau Jr. |journal=Huntington Library Quarterly |volume=57 |issue=4 |pages=367–376 |date=1994 |author=Myerson, Joel|doi=10.2307/3817844 }}</ref> He died in Henry's arms.<ref>Woodlief, Ann. "[http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/ Henry David Thoreau] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191009005716/https://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/ |date=October 9, 2019 }}".</ref>

Upon graduation Thoreau returned home to Concord, where he met [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] through a mutual friend.<ref name=McElroy/> Emerson, who was 14 years his senior, took a paternal and at times patron-like interest in Thoreau, advising the young man and introducing him to a circle of local writers and thinkers, including [[William Ellery Channing (poet)|Ellery Channing]], [[Margaret Fuller]], [[Amos Bronson Alcott|Bronson Alcott]], and [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]] and his son [[Julian Hawthorne]], who was a boy at the time.

Emerson urged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to a quarterly periodical, ''[[The Dial]]'', and lobbied the editor, Margaret Fuller, to publish those writings. Thoreau's first essay published in ''The Dial'' was "Aulus Persius Flaccus",<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.walden.org/documents/file/Library/About%20Thoreau/D/Dial/AulusPersiusFlaccus.pdf|title=Aulus Persius Flaccus|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120925021512/http://www.walden.org/documents/file/Library/About%20Thoreau/D/Dial/AulusPersiusFlaccus.pdf|archive-date=September 25, 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref> an essay on the Roman poet and satirist, in July 1840.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.walden.org/Library/About_Thoreau's_Life_and_Writings:_The_Research_Collections/The_Dial |title=''The Dial'' |publisher=Walden.org |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151018151944/http://www.walden.org/Library/About_Thoreau%27s_Life_and_Writings%3A_The_Research_Collections/The_Dial |archive-date=October 18, 2015 }}</ref> It consisted of revised passages from his journal, which he had begun keeping at Emerson's suggestion. The first journal entry, on October 22, 1837, reads, {{"'}}What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry to-day."<ref>Thoreau, Henry David (2007). ''I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau''. Jeffrey S. Cramer, ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 1.</ref>

Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years he followed [[transcendentalism]], a loose and eclectic [[Idealism|idealist]] philosophy advocated by Emerson, Fuller, and Alcott. They held that an ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical and empirical, and that one achieves that insight via personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. In their view, Nature is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the "radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts", as Emerson wrote in ''Nature'' (1836).

[[File:Thoreau1967stamp.jpg|thumb|right|1967 U.S. postage stamp honoring Thoreau, designed by [[Leonard Baskin]]]]

On April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved in with the [[Ralph Waldo Emerson House|Emersons]].<ref name="Cheever">Cheever, Susan (2006). ''American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work''. Detroit: Thorndike Press. p. 90. {{ISBN|0-7862-9521-X}}.</ref> There, from 1841 to 1844, he served as the children's tutor; he was also an editorial assistant, repairman and gardener. For a few months in 1843, he moved to the home of William Emerson on [[Staten Island]],<ref>{{cite book |title=The Life of Henry David Thoreau |last=Salt |first=H. S. |date=1890 |publisher=Richard Bentley & Son |location=London |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_t_0RAAAAYAAJ |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_t_0RAAAAYAAJ/page/n83 69]}}</ref> and tutored the family's sons while seeking contacts among literary men and journalists in the city who might help publish his writings, including his future literary representative [[Horace Greeley]].<ref>Sanborn, F. B., ed. (1906). ''The Writings of Henry David Thoreau''. Vol. VI, ''Familiar Letters''. [http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/Writings1906/06FamiliarLetters/Years%20of%20Discipline.pdf Chapter 1, "Years of Discipline"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150907235501/http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/Writings1906/06FamiliarLetters/Years%20of%20Discipline.pdf |date=September 7, 2015 }}. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.</ref>{{Rp|68}}

Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his family's [[pencil]] factory, which he would continue to do alongside his writing and other work for most of his adult life. He resurrected the process of making good pencils with inferior [[graphite]] by using clay as a binder.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/pencilhistoryofd00petr|url-access=registration|title=The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance|last=Petroski|first=Henry|publisher=Knopf|year=1992|isbn=9780679734154|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/pencilhistoryofd00petr/page/104 104]–125}}</ref> The process of mixing graphite and clay, known as the Conté process, had been first patented by [[Nicolas-Jacques Conté]] in 1795.  Thoreau made profitable use of a graphite source found in [[New Hampshire]] that had been purchased in 1821 by his uncle, Charles Dunbar. The company's other source of graphite had been [[Tantiusques]], a mine operated by Native Americans in [[Sturbridge, Massachusetts]]. Later, Thoreau converted the pencil factory to produce plumbago, a name for graphite at the time, which was used in the [[electrotyping]] process.<ref>Conrad, Randall. (Fall 2005). [http://thoreau.eserver.org/pencils.html "Machine in the Wetland: Re-imagining Thoreau's Plumbago-Grinder"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070609102739/http://thoreau.eserver.org/pencils.html |date=June 9, 2007 }}. ''[http://www.thoreausociety.org/_activities_tsb.htm Thoreau Society Bulletin] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071223191911/http://www.thoreausociety.org/_activities_tsb.htm |date=December 23, 2007 }}'' 253.</ref>

Once back in Concord, Thoreau went through a restless period. In April 1844 he and his friend Edward Hoar accidentally set a fire that consumed {{convert|300|acre|ha|-1|abbr=off}} of Walden Woods.<ref>[http://www.calliope.org/thoreau/thorotime.html ''A Chronology of Thoreau's Life, with Events of the Times''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160213001457/http://www.calliope.org/thoreau/thorotime.html |date=February 13, 2016 }}. The Thoreau Project, Calliope Film Resources. Accessed June 11, 2007.</ref>