I am not sure whether you had personal knowledge of Thoreau, whom I had seen a little of from time to time, and a good deal more about thirty years ago, when I spent several Sundays at his mother’s house (having the same expectation of becoming a resident of Concord), and had a good many talks with him. He was a surveyor by profession, and kept a local map, which served him for a guide in his long tramps. He avoided the highways, and was reluctant even to have his feet off the turf or out of the woods. One may believe that he knew every rabbit-burrow and squirrel-hole in Concord, if not the individual physiognomy of each wild creature. He watched them as individuals; would bring turtles’ eggs in his pocket to hatch in the garden, and had an undue contempt for book-and-study naturalists, unjustly disparaging Agassiz. As Mr. Emerson said to me, he was "so good—and so bad!" [p. 12]
       His hermit-like and ascetic theories were eked out by frequent sharing of Emerson’s conversation and hospitality. Before "Walden" was published I heard him give a lecture before a small audience, which began: "I have been a good deal of a traveler—about my native village," and went on with a very entertaining account of his experiments in living. Noncomformist as he was, he once spent a week [sic] in Concord jail for refusing to pay his taxes. His mother lived very quietly near the railroad station, and took occasional boarders—like myself. His sister was (I believe) a nurse by profession, and a grave woman of bright intelligence. She used to beat me easily at chess. His out-door life probably kept at bay the consumption he died of; though his hermitage could hardly have been good for him.
       — Anonymous, in Joel Benton, Persons and Places (New York: Broadway, 905), pp. 12-13.