Facts in Walden

The Gulistan ("Rose Garden") is a distinctive piece of Persian literature from 1259 CE and widely refered to as a source of wisdom. It is one of two major works by the Persian poet Saadi of Shiraz.

William Penn (1644–1718) was the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia. He advocated for democracy and religious freedom, and he was also known for fostering better relationships and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans.

Elizabeth Fry née Gurney (1780–1845) was an English prison reformer, social reformer, and a Christian philanthropist. Her work provided the necessary force to get new legislation enacted to make prisons more humane.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) is best known as an English mathematician widely recognized as one of the most important and influential scholars of all time. His three laws of motion helped establish classical mechanics by describing the relationship between an object and the forces that act on it and how it moves in response to that force.

John Milton (1608–1674) was an English poet best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, published in 1667. Milton garnered international acclaim within his lifetime, writing on subjects and themes that reflected his passion for freedom and self-determination.

An English statesman, Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) was elected to Parliament in 1628. When the English civil war broke out in 1642, Cromwell joined the military and soon led his own troops. He waged military campaigns in Ireland and Scotland in the 1650s, attained the rank of general, and served as “lord protector” of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland from 1653 until his death.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, and Renaissance man. Bacon also rose through the ranks of the state service; he was knighted in 1603 and eventually promoted to Lord Chancellor in 1618. After being forced to leave office due to bribery charges, Bacon left public service and pursued his literary, scientific, and philosophical work.

Anyone who is a member of the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus who is devoted to missionary and educational work is considered a Jesuit. This group was founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in 1534 and has a strong presence across the United States and the world.

John Howard (1726–1790) was a philanthropist and the first English prison reformer. During his life, he visited hundreds of prisons throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Europe. His book The State of the Prisons in 1777 called attention to many of the deficiencies and problems prevalent at the time. Howard's work is credited with improving prisons to more humanitarian conditions and with establishing the practice of placing inmates in single cells.

This breed of large working dog is typically brown or black in coloring. Thoreau chooses this particular breed here because they are not only known for their intelligence, tremendous strength, and loyalty, but they also excel at water rescue.

Robin Goodfellow is also known as Puck from English folklore and popularized as a character in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck usually personifies the clever, mischievous prankster and is typically represented as an elf, sprite, or jester.

This expression is based on other common ones that associate idleness with mischievous or harmful behavior. Such expressions are rooted in biblical verses that emphasize the importance of hard work and describe idleness as a gateway to sinful behavior.

In Greek mythology, Admetus was the king of Pherae in Thessaly and famous for his hospitality and justice. He was also one of the Argonauts.

While the specific details for this tribe are unclear, this spelling for this particular Native American tribe of the Creek Confederation is unique to Thoreau.

William Bartram (1739–1823) was an American botanist and naturalist who spent much of his time studying the flora and fauna of Florida. His most popular work, known as Bartram's Travels contains detailed accounts of his experiences exploring the North American Southeast.

While not in as much use as it was in Thoreau's time, this adjective describes things as neat and smart in appearance.

Since Thoreau is certainly not using an electric lamp, this japanned lamp is likely an oil lamp with a tall, glass flute. The metal parts of the lamp would have been japanned, which means to coat in a dark, enamel-like varnish to give the metal a black-gloss finish. This covering also protects the metal from rust and the elements.

This expression represents the legal stipulation at the time which said that a widow received one third of her husband's wealth and possessions.

Marcus Porcius Cato (234–149 BCE), commonly known as Cato the Elder, was a Roman general and author of agricultural texts. His only work that has survived in its entirety is De Agri Culture or On Agriculture, written around 160 BCE. It deals with an assorted collection of knowledge on husbandry and farm management.

"Sal-soda" is Sodium Carbonate and has practical applications as a cleaning agent in homes. Sodium bicarbonate, which Thoreau probably meant, is commonly known as baking soda and can be used when baking bread.

Typically made of cornmeal, butter, and salt, these unleavened cakes purportedly earned their name by being cooked over a fire on the flat, metal part of the farming tool of the same name (hoe).

Arcadia is a peaceful, pastoral region in a mountainous district of southern Greece. In Greek mythology it is the home of Pan and poetically it often represents a kind of bucolic paradise.

The Bhagavad Gita is an ancient, 700-verse Hindu scripture. Written in Sanskrit, the 18 chapters of the scripture are set within in a narrative, dialogic framework between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Lord Krishna. Thoreau, like other writers and philosophers in the 19th century, looked toward the East for alternative voices and ideas to European philosophy and religion.

Arthur Young (1741–1820) was a British agricultural author who built his reputation on the views he expressed through his writing as an agriculture and politics.

While a cord typically refers to some long and slender piece of material, it also means a unit of wood cut for fuel equal to a stack 4 x 4 x 8 feet or 128 cubic feet.

The undefeated, legendary Thoroughbred racehorse Flying Childers is often cited as the first truly great racehorse in the history of the sport. Flying Childers was foaled in 1714 and raced in the Newmarket Racecourse, a British Thoroughbred horse-racing venue in Newmarket, Suffolk.

Jean-Baptiste Say (1772–1823) was a French businessman and economist whose classically liberal views argued in favor of things like free trade and fewer restraints on business. While it's somewhat debated whether or not he actually was the first to propose it, Say's Law of markets is attributed to him as his most popular contribution.

The English political economist David Ricardo (1772–1823), along with Malthus, Smith, and Mill, was considered one of the most influential economists of so-called classical period of economics.

The Scottish moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith (1723–1790) was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. His best known works are The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).

In Roman mythology, Minerva (Athena in Greek) is the goddess of wisdom. She is also the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. In a contest of handiwork that Momus judged, she built a house but was criticized for not including wheels on it so that the inhabitant could get away from his neighbors if need be.

In Greek mythology, Momus is a god of pleasure, satire, and mockery. This god featured in two of Aesop's Fables, one of which Thoreau references here: Jupiter told Momus to judge which house three different gods had made was the best. Momus was jealous of all, so he found fault with all of the houses.

The choice of colored clothing was not arbitrary in medieval Europe. Blue dyes were rare and expensive, and purple dyes were even more so. This meant that such colors were reserved only for the powerful, wealthy, and regal. This connection between wealth, color, and dyes created our modern associations with them as status symbols.

While modern readers may be a little confused as to why Thoreau would be talking about ice cream here, this expression originally means "fashionably" or "stylishly." Over time, it acquired its current meaning of a dish served with ice cream.

Thoreau means Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1837 and was chosen as one of the speakers for commencement activities.

Trinity Church is an historic parish church in the Episcopal Diocese of New York. The first Trinity Church building was built in Manhattan in 1698, but it was later destroyed by the Great New York City Fire of 1776. The second Trinity Church building was completed in 1788 only to be torn down in 1839 after the structure was weakened by storms. The current building was completed in 1846.

When the Dutch arrived and began to colonize what they named New Amsterdam in the 17th century, they established this main road that eventually became known as Broadway. This street runs the length of the island of Manhattan in New York City. For Thoreau, it was known as part of the bustling heart of New York City—an association continued to this day.

"To mortise" and "to tenon" refer to creating holes and protrusions (respectively) in a piece of wood or other material so that it will fit with another piece to form a connection. This allows structures to be held together without items like nails, glue, or tar.

New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut represent the modern states that the territory of 17th-century New Netherland covered. The east coast of North America was colonized by the Dutch and the English, creating the areas that became known as New Netherland and New England.

While this might not actually be a specific person, Greek historians have recorded Sardanapalus as the last king of Assyria. He is portrayed as notoriously wealthy. Thoreau uses Sardanapalus here to emphasize how tax collectors will see money in even the poorest traveler.

These are horizontal blinds that have horizontal slats stacked one above the other. Generally, such blinds are made of metal, plastic, or sometimes wood (as was likely in Thoreau's time). These slats are suspended by strips of cloth or cords which are connected to a pulley allowing users to raise, lower, or alter the angle of the slats to let more or less sunlight in.

Sir Benjamin Thompson, known as Count Rumford, dramatically changed the way fireplaces heated homes in the 18th century. A physicist best known for his work on heat, he designed a shallow, tall fireplace with angled sides and a narrower chimney. These sides reflected heat back into the room, and together with the narrow throat to minimize wind and smoke turbulence, the Rumford fireplace efficiently removes smoke with little loss of heat.

Major-General Daniel Gookin (1612–1687) wrote about many North American Indian tribes during his time in the Virginia and Massachusetts colonies. Originally a settler, he eventually gained a small measure of political prominence in regional government.

A "Laplander" is an inhabitant of the area known as Lapland, a region that consists of the northern-most portion of the Scandinavian peninsula. Politically, the land is now divided among Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Russian Federation.

Samuel Laing (1780 – 1868) was a Scottish travel writer who spent much of his energy traveling and writing about Scandinavia, Finland, and northern Germany. His descriptions of these countries were published and generally well-distributed in England and the United States.

Roman tradition and mythology shares much with the Greek. The Parcae (singular Parca) is the Latin name for the Fates, called the Moirai in Greek. These are the female personification of destiny who could see all that would happen to anyone and spun the metaphorical threads of life.

This word technically refers to the state or condition of someone or something being (or in the process of being) equipped. However, Thoreau uses it to refer to the kinds of clothing, accessories, and attire that accompany one's dress in order to complete their ensemble.

The modern and historical boundaries of Russia have stretched from Europe to the Pacific Ocean. The split between European and Asiatic Russia has sometimes varied depending on cultural perceptions, but physically the Ural Mountains mark the transition point between European Russia and Asiatic Russian.

Ida Laura Pfeiffer (1797–1858), was an Austrian traveler and writer, known as one of the first female explorers. Her travel writings became immensely popular, getting translated into seven languages. Despite her success, she was still denied membership to the Royal Geographical Society in London due to being a woman.

There is only one historical source for the journey of Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian explorer from the 5th or 6th century BCE: a Greek periplus, or manuscript. Hanno is best known for exploring the northwestern and western coasts of Africa, with some historians suggesting that he reached as far south as the modern-day country of Gabon.

Thoreau is referring to Jean François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse (sometimes La Pérouse). He was a French Naval officer and ocean explorer during the 18th century. The "untold fate" that Thoreau mentions alludes to how Laperouse's expedition vanished in 1788 in Oceania.

This name referred to China and its empire, and is derived from the translation of the original Chinese 天朝 (Tiāncháo) which means heavenly or celestial. Massachusetts began trading with China around 1780.

Considered the founder of the field of organic chemistry, Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) was a German scientist who made significant contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry. Thoreau would have known Liebig's work at the time, and he refers to him here to add credibility to his statements about internal combustion.

Charles Darwin (1809–1882), an English naturalist, is best known for his contribution to the science of evolution. Darwin formulated his own theory of evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species based on evidence he had collected from around the world, particularly the Galapagos Islands.

Interestingly, the American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) based his well-known hierarchy of needs on the works of Albert Einstein and Henry David Thoreau. This list of basic necessities for humans serves as a precursor to the hierarchy that Maslow established, creating a theory of mental health founded on fulfilling basic needs in priority in order to reach self-actualization.

A Chinese philosopher, Confucius (551–479 BCE) postulated ideas on the importance of practical moral values, and his works were collected by his disciples to form the basis of the Confucian philosophy.

Thoreau is quoting from the Vishnu Purana, one of the eighteen Maha (or great) Puranas, a genre of ancient and medieval texts of Hinduism. This Purana primarily centers around the god Vishnu and is one of the most studied Puranas, containing controversial details of the genealogy of various dynasties. As mentioned earlier, Thoreau and other thinkers in the 19th century took a strong interest in exploring Eastern religions and philosophies.

A Greek physician, Hippocrates (circa 460–377 BCE) is regarded by many at the father of medicine. The Hippocratic oath is derived from his name due to his association with a large body of medical writings from ancient Greece.

Thoreau is likely referring to John Evelyn, an English writer who is chiefly remembered for the accounts and insights in his Diary, published in 1818. This text described many events throughout history and was consulted by many writers in the 19th century.

William Wilberforce was a British politician, social activist, and a fierce opponent of the slave trade. His efforts brought about the end of the slave trade in the West Indies in 1807. Thoreau invokes Wilberforce here much in the same way he did Iolanaus earlier: the common people do not have champions or help to assist with their issues, and they must rely on themselves.

Thoreau is referring to Sir Walter Raleigh (circa 1554–1618), an English writer, soldier, and explorer, among many other intriguing things. His poetry has been celebrated for its straightforward, unadorned style. Raleigh was one of the most memorable historical figures of the Elizabethan era.

Deucalion is the son of Prometheus in Greek mythology. When Zeus sent a flood to wipe out humankind's wickedness, Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, were allowed to survive and instructed to throw stones over their heads. These stones transformed into humans and the world was repopulated.

By "old book," Thoreau means the Christian Bible. The line that follows is a paraphrase from the biblical passage from Matthew 6: 19. The next line from that same passage (Matthew 6: 20) says to put one's treasures in heaven where they cannot succumb to moth, rust, and thievery. Thoreau is likely quoting scripture in addition to his Greek metaphors to appeal to the intellectual and the faithful in order to make them see that people are struggling with the lives they have been given.

"Bramin" (spelled "Brahmin" or "Brahman") refers to a member of the priestly caste of the Hindu faith. During the 19th century, many philosophers looked to the dominant religions in parts of Asia for new perspectives on spiritual enlightenment. Thoreau will later talk of the influence such faiths had on the transcendentalist movement.

When Captain James Cook sailed to the Hawaiian Islands in January of 1778, he named them the Sandwich Islands, a name that would stick for decades. At the time Cook was sailing, the First Lord of the Admiralty for the British was names John Mantagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich. Cook chose to name the islands after the earl, but they were later renamed after the name of its largest island.