Can anyone confirm this story? I’m talking about the one where Thoreau is in the local jail, having refused to pay his poll tax, and Emerson happens to walk by. “What are you doing in there, Henry?” Emerson calls through the window. “Ralph, what are you doing out there?” Thoreau replies. How could this story not be apocryphal? It delivers too neat a package. Thoreau didn’t pay his tax because he objected to the war on Mexico. With his act, he provides posterity a model of non-violent social protest. Emerson’s program, which Thoreau knew well, was to change the collective Read more