1817: the birth of a pencil maker
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
I was ten when I first read those words. The author, born this day in 1817, and who died in the early years of the Civil War, was named David at birth, switching his middle and first names after 4 years at Harvard, known to us as Henry David Thoreau.
His family ran a pencil factory, in which he worked for much of his adult life.
He was an educator, having taught in Concord Academy only to quit shortly after beginning because he refused
