John Shepard Keyes recalls spending several days with Thoreau in Stoughton Hall at Harvard University:
The Monday before Commencement then the last Wednesday in August was the appointed time. To reach Cambridge in season involved then going down Sunday night and my arrangements to spend the nights with David Henry Thoreau as we all called him then, had all been comfortably agreed upon. Armed with Parson Frost’s certificate of good moral character, (precious little he knew about mine) and a carpet bag well stored with lunches and books I gladly mounted the mail stage about 5 PM & rode off. Nothing memorable can I remember happened on that momentous ride bearing a green boy to the first of his decisive trials in real life and I was dropped at the yard gate where Thoreau met me and took me to his room in Stoughton. I was anxious of the morrow’s fate overawed by the dull old college walls, and not a little inclined to be over-thoughtful at the sudden change it all implied. But these fancies were soon dispelled, a burst of Thoreau’s classmates into his room, headed by Chas. Theodore Russell, Trask, and others who chaffed Thoreau and his freshman in all sorts of amusing ways, and took down some of our local pride, and Concord self conceit for which I soon found out that my host was as distinguished in college as afterwards These roaring seniors fresh from vacation’s fun and with no more college duties to worry about made a sharp contrast with a Sunday evening at home. It was seeing something of the end before even the beginning. There had been some kind of a row with the faculty and the trouble was carried into the Criminal Court and I had heard the county side of it at home, and now was told the students side by some of the actors or sympathizers and got some ideas of college discipline that varied essentially from the home notion It was startling and novel to hear “Old Prex” and other nicknames familiarly applied to such dignitaries as Concord had almost worshipped, and I fear that the introduction wasnt of the most useful sort to just such a boy as I was.
