Thoreau submits an essay on the prompt “What is meant by popular feeling? How are we to know what it is on any subject? Is it less likely to be safe and just than that of the few? Does it cause more harm when left to take its own course than when interfered with?” for a class assignment given him on 2 October.

Thoreau is also given the prompt to his next essay, “Of the feelings with which a laboring man and a scholar are supposed to regard each other’s occupation,” due on 30 October (Thoreau’s Harvard Years, part 2:9; Early Essays and Miscellanies, 23-4).