To Providence to lecture.

December 6.

I see thick ice and boys skating all the way to Providence, but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture.  

After lecturing twice this winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself by trying to become a successful lecturer, ie., to interest my audiences. 

I am disappointed to find that most that I am and value myself for is lost, or worse than lost, on my audience. I fail to get even the attention of the mass. I should suit them better if I suited myself less. 

I feel that the public demand an average man, —average thoughts and manners, — not originality, nor even absolute excellence. You cannot interest them except as you are like them and sympathize with them. 

I would rather that my audience come to me than that I should go to them, and so they be sifted; i.e., I would rather write books than lectures. That is fine, this coarse.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 6, 1854

I see thick ice and boys skating . . . but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture. See December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but . . .I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business.")

This winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself by trying to become a successful lecturer. See Thoreau's Lectures Before Walden, Lecture 46 (Wednesday, December 6, 1854, 7:30 PM Thoreau read at Railroad Hall in Providence, Rhode Island his lecture “What Shall it Profit“, in which he argues “a man had better starve at once than loose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.” Over the course of time this lecture evolved evolved into "Life Without Principle.")