Read "Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Nature" by Léon Bazalgette online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The dear presences are ranged about you there, in the centre of that universe for which you have longed; it is good there, and what does the rest matter? For a lover who has been nourished exclusively on his dreams for six months, the joy of return surpasses everything. It is winter; but what warms Henry is not merely the sticks in the stove. All Concord offers its warmth for his return.
He finds his father still busy with the pencils. What if he were to turn in and help? All right, the pencils. The lead seems less grey in the delight of his return. Since he has nothing to look for in a literary way, and no opportunity offers for the moment, he will stay at home and attend to the pencil business with his father. Doesn't it occur to you that a miserable little piece of lead imprisoned between two sticks of cedar-wood may be unworthy of your attention? It is not quite what you have dreamed of, perhaps. But Henry knows the secret. For there is a secret. So much so that it would be a mistake for anyone who has no business there to approach the workshop where the Thoreaus, father and son, manufacture their product.