They recalled his eccentricities rather than his abilities. One college acquaintance remembered that Thoreau always wore a dark green coat, "perhaps because the college authorities required black." Thoreau was in no sense gregarious, he was combative rather than affable in general society, his classmates knew him slightly and awakened, as has many a class before and since, to a tardy realization that they had included a true, though unrecognized, genius. He did form, however, a few strong friendships, while he seems to have cherished a proud, delicately concealed, class sentiment. Charles Stearns Wheeler, from Lincoln, near Concord, was one of the most brilliant scholars of this class of 1837. With him Thoreau became associated in many ways; he was an important influence in the later Walden experience. In the Emerson-Carlyle letters, the former refers to this young student who acted as assistant editor of Carlyle's American editions: "Stearns Wheeler is very faithful in his loving labor and has taken a world of pains with the sweetest smile."
The few scattering references to Thoreau's college life in his letters and journals are interesting and suggestive. In "Walden" he questions the economic side of college with a view to its proportionate results. He probably refers to his own
