Although he was admitted, it was very close. The president of Harvard at the time, Josiah Quincy, supposedly said to Henry, "You barely got in." (Mahoney-Smith). During his stay at Harvard Thoreau spent a good deal of his time reading in the college library, the first good collection of books to which he had access. He did become gregarious enough to join a fraternity (apparently, chiefly to have access to their library) and to take part in the debates and colloquiums (Concise 350). In the spring of 1836, Thoreau dropped out of Harvard due to the development of tuberculosis that was to plague his life (Concise 350). .
Henry later returned to Harvard and maintained a better than average scholastic record and at his graduation in 1837 was chosen as one of the honor students to speak on the "commercial spirit," at the commencement exercises, where in he startled his audience by suggesting,.
""The order of things should be somewhat reversed; the seventh should be man's day of toil, wherein to earn his living by the sweat of his brow; and the other six his Sabbath of the affections and the soul-in which to range this widespread garden, drink in the soft influences and sublime revelations of nature"-a program of life which he .
himself was soon to adapt (Concise 350).".
The country was in the midst of a deep depression; with a high unemployment rate, Thoreau was fortunate enough to be hired immediately by the Concord School committee to teach in the same one room school he had attended as a child (Concise 350). Around the end of the first 2 weeks Deacon Nehemian Ball, one of the members of the school committee, observed Henry. Ball noticed that Henry did not use corporal punishment as a method of disciplining rowdy students. When Deacon Ball asked Henry to employ corporal punishment in the classroom, Henry began, at random, asking for students to leave the classroom, to be whipped a Henry's hand (Mahoney-Smith).
