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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kammerdiner" data-source="post: 1619416" data-attributes="member: 75300">Thoreau did finally buy himself a spy-glass in 1854, long after the Walden experiment. In his journal he wrote:"I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet."But Thoreau had a sort of love/hate relationship with optics. Later in 1854 he writes:"One might say that all views through a telescope or microscope were purely visionary, for it is only by his eye and not by any other sense--not by his whole man--that the beholder is there where his is presumed to be. It is a disruptive mode of viewing as far as the beholder is concerned."Nonetheless, you can see his spy-glass in the museum at Concord and its pretty clear he used it often. To my knowledge, there's no evidence he ever wanted a better one, however. That's not really what he was about.One more thing: he evidently couldn't afford an "alpha": "Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars. Best military spy-glass with six slides, which shuts up to about same size, fifteen dollars, and very powerful."  The more things change . . .</blockquote>