Re: Different Drummers...

Posted by Sauerkraut on September 23, 2000

In Reply to: Re: Different Drummers... posted by ESC on September 23, 2000

: : Was the phrase "Walking to the beat of a different drummer" an original of Henry David Thoreau's (as used in "Walden") Or did it originate somewhere else?

: : Thanks for your help!

: According to the "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Fact on File, New York, 1997), Thoreau is the author of that phrase. "hear a different drummer -- The expression is from Henry David Thoreau's 'Walden' (1850): 'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.' A variation is 'march to a different drummer.'"

Those "old guys" certainly had it right, and knew how to say it eloquently. Would that such prose was still the common talk of today.