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| Exhibition poster © Sawyer Phillips (2015) |
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Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Thoreau" in his Lectures and Biographical Sketches (Boston, 1889)—
His [Henry David Thoreau's] father was a manufacturer of lead pencils, and Henry applied himself for a time to this craft, believing he could make a better pencil than was then in use. After completing his experiments, he exhibited his work to chemists and artists in Boston, and having obtained their certificates to its excellence and its equality with the best London manufacture, he returned home contented. His friends congratulated him that he had now opened his way to fortune. But he replied that he should never make another pencil. "Why should I? I would not do again what I have done once."
