Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes – “waldo, why are you not here?”

Henry Thoreau was languishing in jail after he had refused to pay the Massachusetts poll tax in 1843 [to protest the Mexican-American War], Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit him and asked him why he was there. “Waldo, why are you not here?” said Thoreau. – Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes