ness; there were self-sacrificing victims who compensated for the levity and rashness of their companions. The young people lived a great deal in a short time, and came forth, some of them, perhaps, with shattered constitutions. And a few grave sanitary influences of character were happily there, which, I was assured, were always felt.

George W. Curtis, of New York, and his brother, of English Oxford, were members of the family from the first. Theodore Parker, the near neighbor of the farm and the most intimate friend of Mr. Ripley, was a frequent visitor. Mr. Ichabod Morton of Plymouth, a plain man, formerly engaged through many years in the fisheries with success,

In and around Brook Farm, whether as members, boarders, or visitors, were many remarkable persons, for character, intellect, or accomplishments. I recall one youth of the subtlest mind, I believe I must say the subtlest observer and diviner of character I ever met, living, reading, writing, talking, there, perhaps, as long as the colony held together; his mind fed and overfed by whatever is exalted in genius, whether in poetry or art, in drama or music, or in social accomplishment and elegancy; a man of no employment or practical aims; a student and philosopher, who found his daily enjoyment not with the elders or his exact contemporaries so much as with the fine boys who were skating and playing ball or bird-hunting; forming the closest friendships with such, and finding his delight in the pet

ulant heroisms of boys: yet was he the chosen counselor to whom the guardians would repair on any hitch or difficulty that occurred, and drew from him a wise counsel, a fine, subtle, inward genius, puny in body and habit as a girl, yet with an aplomb like a general, never disconcerted. He lived and thought in 1842, such worlds of life; all hinging on the thought of being or reality as opposed to consciousness; hating intellect with the ferocity of a Swedenborg. He was the abbé or spiritual father, from his religious bias. His reading lay in Eschylus, Plato, Dante, Calderon, Shakespeare, and in modern novels and romances of merit. There too was Hawthorne, with his cold yet gentle genius, if he failed to do justice to this temporary home. There was the accomplished Doctor of Music, who has presided over its literature ever since in our metropolis. Rev. William Henry Channing, now of London, was from the first a student of Socialism in France and England, and in perfect sympathy with this experiment. An English baronet, Sir John Caldwell, was a frequent visitor, and more or less directly interested in the leaders and the success.

Hawthorne drew some sketches, not happily, as I think; I should rather say, quite unworthy of his genius. No friend who knew Margaret Fuller could recognize her rich and brilliant genius under the dismal mask which the public fancied was meant for her in that disagreeable story.

The founders of Brook Farm should have this praise that they made what all people try to make, an agreeable place to live in. All comers, even the most fastidious, found it the pleasantest of residences. It is certain that freedom from household routine, variety of character and talent, variety of work, variety of means, of thought and instruction, art, music, poetry, reading, masquerade, did not permit sluggishness or despondency; broke up routine.

There is agreement in the testimony that it was, to most of the associates, education; to many, the most important period of their life, the birth of valued friendships, their first acquaintance with the riches of conversation, their training in behavior. The art of letterwriting, it is said, was immensely cultivated. Letters were always flying not only from house to house, but from room to room. It was a perpetual picnic, a French Revolution in small, an age of reason in a patty-pan.

In the American social communities, the gossip found such vent and sway as to become despotic. The institutions were whispering-galleries, in which the adored Saxon privacy was lost. Married women, I believe, uniformly decided against the community. It was to them. like the brassy and lacquered life in hotels. The common school was well enough, but to the common nursery they had grave objections. Eggs might be hatched in ovens, but the hen on her own account much preferred the old way. A hen without her chickens was but half a hen.

It was a curious experience of the patrons and leaders of this noted community, in which the agreement with many parties was that they should give so many hours of instruction in mathematics, in music, in moral and intellectual philosophy, and so forth, that in every instance the new-comers showed themselves keenly alive to the advantages of the society, and were sure to avail themselves of every means of instruction; their knowledge was increased, their manners refined, but they became in that proportion averse to labor, and were charged by the heads of the departments with a certain indolence and selfishness.

In practice it is always found that virtue is occasional, spotty, and not linear or cubic. Good people are as bad

tious runs in veins, and the most punctilious in some particulars are latitudinarian in others. It was very gently said that people on whom beforehand all persons would put the utmost reliance were not responsible. They saw the necessity that the work must be done, and did it not, and it of course fell to be done by the few religious workers. No doubt there was in many a certain strength drawn from the fury of dissent. Thus Mr. Ripley told Theodore Parker, "There is your accomplished friend: he would hoe corn all Sunday, if I would let him, but all Massachusetts could not make him do it on Monday."

Of course every visitor found that there was a comic side to this Paradise of shepherds and shepherdesses. There was a stove in every chamber, and every one might burn as much wood as he or she would saw. The ladies took cold on washing-day; so it was ordained that the gentlemen shepherds should wring and hang out clothes, which they punctually did. And it would sometimes occur that when they danced in the evening, clothes-pins dropped plentifully from their pockets. The country members naturally were surprised to observe that one man plowed all day, and one looked out of the window all day, and perhaps drew his picture, and both received at night the same wages. One would meet also some modest pride in their advanced condition, signified by a frequent phrase: "Before we came out of civilization." The question which occurs to you had occurred much earlier to Fourier: "How, in this charming Elysium, is the dirty work to be done?" And long ago Fourier had exclaimed, "Ah, I have it!" and jumped with joy. "Don't you see," he cried, "that nothing so delights the young Caucasian child as dirt? See the mud-pies that all children will make, if you will let them. See how much more joy they find in pouring their pudding on the

table-cloth than into their beautiful mouths. The children from six to eight, organized into companies, with flags and uniforms, shall do this last function of civilization."

In Brook Farm was this peculiarity, that there was no head. In every family is the father; in every factory, a foreman; in a shop, a master; in a boat, the skipper: but in this Farm, no authority; each was master or mistress of their own actions; happy, hapless anarchists. They expressed, after much perilous experience, the conviction that plain dealing was the best defense of manners and morals between the sexes. People cannot live together in any but necessary ways. The only candidates who will present themselves will be those who have tried the experiment of independence and ambition, and have failed; and none others will barter for the most comfortable equality the chance of superiority. Then all communities have quarreled. Few people can live together on their merits. There must be kindred, or mutual economy, or a common interest in their business, or other external tie.

The society at Brook Farm existed, I think, about six or seven years, and then broke up; the Farm was sold, and I believe all the partners came out with pecuniary loss. Some of them had

I spent on it the accumulations of years. I suppose they all, at the moment, regarded it as a failure. I do not think they can so regard it now, but probably as an important chapter in their experience which has been of lifelong value. What knowledge of themselves and of

each other, what various practical wisdom, what personal power, what studies of character, what accumulated culture, many of the members owed to it! What mutual measure they took of each other! It was a close union, like that in a ship's cabin, of clergymen, young collegians, merchants, mechanics, farmers' sons and daughters, with men and women of rare opportunities and delicate culture, yet assembled there by a sentiment which all shared, some of them hotly shared, of the honesty of a life of labor and of the beauty of a life of humanity. The yeoman saw refined manners in persons who were his friends; and the lady or the romantic scholar saw the continuous strength and faculty in people who would have disgusted them but that these powers were now spent in the direction of their own theory of life.

I recall these few selected facts, none of them of much independent interest, but symptomatic of the times and country. I please myself with the thought. that our American mind is not now eccentric or rude in its strength, but is beginning to show a quiet power, drawn from wide and abundant sources, proper to a continent and to an educated people. If I have owed much to the special influences I have indicated, I am not less aware of that excellent and increasing circle of masters in arts and in song and in science, who cheer the intellect of our cities and this country to-day; whose genius is not a lucky accident, but normal, and with broad foundation of culture, and so inspires the hope of steady strength advancing on itself, and a day without night.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"I HEV hearn tell ez how them thar boys rides thar horses over hyar ter the Settlemint nigh on ter every night in the week ter play kyerds,-'Old Sledge' they calls it; an' thar goin's-on air jes' scandalous,jes' a-drinkin' of applejack, an' a-bettin' of thar money."

It was a lonely place: a sheer precipice on one side of the road that curved to its verge; on the other, an ascent so abrupt that the tall stems of the pines seemed laid upon the ground as they were marshaled in serried columns up the hillside. No broad landscape was to be seen from this great projecting ledge of the mountain; the valley was merely a little basin, walled in on every side by the meeting ranges that rose so high as to intercept all distant prospect, and narrow the world to the contracted area bounded by the sharp lines of their wooded summits, cut hard and clear against the blue sky. But for the road it would have seemed impossible that these wild steeps should be the chosen haunt of aught save deer, or bear, or fox; and certainly the instinct of the eagle built that eyrie called the Settlement, still higher, far above the towering pine forest. It might be accounted a tribute to the enterprise of Old Sledge that mountain barriers proved neither let nor hindrance, and here in the fastnesses was held that vivacious sway, potent alike to fascinate and to scandalize.

In the middle of the stony road stood a group of roughly clad mountaineers, each in an attitude of sluggish disinclination to the allotted task of mending the highway, leaning lazily upon a grubbing-hoe or sorry spade, except, indeed, the overseer, who was upheld by the single crowbar furnished by the county, the only sound implement in use among the party. The provident

dispensation of the law, leaving the care of the road to the tender mercies of its able-bodied neighbors over eighteen and under forty-five years of age, was a godsend to the Settlement and to the inhabitants of the tributary region, in that even if it failed of the immediate design of securing a tolerable passway through the woods, it served the far more important purpose of drawing together the diversely scattered settlers, and affording them unwonted conversational facilities. These meetings were well attended, although their results were often sadly inadequate. To-day the usual complement of laborers was on hand, except the three boys whose scandalous susceptibility to the mingled charms of Old Sledge and apple-jack had occasioned

comment.

"They'll hev ter be fined, ef they don't take keer an' come an' work," remarked the overseer of the road, one Tobe Rains, who reveled in a little brief authority.

"From what I hev hearn tell 'bout thar goin's-on, none of 'em is a-goin' ter hev nothin' ter pay fines with, when they gits done with thar foolin' an' sech," said Abner Blake, a man of weight and importance, and the eldest of the party.. It did not seem to occur to any of the group that the losses among the three card-players served to enrich one of the number, and that the deplorable wholesale insolvency shadowed forth was not likely to ensue in substance. Perhaps their fatuity in this regard arose from the circumstance that fining the derelict was not an actuality, although sometimes of avail as a threat.

"An' we hev ter leave everythink whar it fell down, an' come hyar ter do thar work fur 'em, a-fixin' up of this hyar road fur them ter travel," exclaimed Tobe Rains, in an attempt to chafe

--

himself into a rage. "It's got ter quit, - that's what I say; this hyar way of doin' hev got ter quit." By way of lending verisimilitude to the industrial figure of rhetoric, he lifted his hammer and dealt an ineffectual blow at a large bowlder. Then he picked up his crowbar, and, leaning heavily on the implement, resigned himself to the piquant interest of gossip. "An' thar's that Josiah Tait," he continued, "a settled married man, a-behavin' no better 'n them fool boys. He hain't struck a lick of work fur nigh on ter a month, 'ceptin' a-goin' huntin' with the t'others, every wunst in a while. He hev jes' pulled through at the little eend of the horn. I never sot much store by him, nohow, though when he war married ter Melindy Price, nigh 'bout a year ago, the folks all 'lowed ez she war a-doin' mighty well ter git him, ez he war toler❜ble well off through his folks all bein' dead but him, an' he hed what he hed his own self."

"I would n't let my darter marry no man ez plays kyerds," said a very young fellow, with great decision of manner, 66 no matter what he hed, nor how he hed it."

As the lady referred to was only two weeks old, and this solicitude concerning her matrimonial disposition was somewhat premature, there was a goodnatured guffaw at the young fellow's expense.

"An' now," Tobe Rains resumed, "ef Josiah keeps on the way ez he hev started, he hain't a-goin' ter hev no more 'n the t'other boys round the mounting, -mebbe not ez much, an' Melindy Price hed better hev a-tuken somebody what owned less but hed a harder grip." A long silence fell upon the party. Three of the twenty men assembled, in dearth of anything else to do, took heart of grace and fell to work; fifteen leaned upon their hoes in a variety of postures, all equally expressive of sloth, and with. slow eyes followed the graceful sweep NO. 312.

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of a hawk, drifting on the wind, without a motion of its wings, across the blue sky to the opposite range. Two, one of whom was the overseer, searched their pockets for a plug of tobacco, and when it was found its possessor gave to him that lacked. At length Abner Blake, who furnished all the items of news, and led the conversation, removed his eyes from the flight of the hawk, as the bird was absorbed in the variegated October foliage of the opposite mountain, and reopened the discussion. At the first word the three who were working paused in attentive quietude; the fifteen changed their position to one still more restful; the overseer sat down on a bowlder by the roadside, and placed his contemplative elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

"I hev hearn tell," said Abner Blake, with the pleasing consciousness of absorbing the attention of the company, and being able to meet high expectations, "ez how Josiah hev los' that thar brindled heifer ter Budd Wray, an' the main heft of his crap of corn. But mebbe he'll take a turn now an' win 'em back agin."

"T ain't likely," remarked Tobe Rains.

"No, 't ain't," coincided the virtuous fifteen.

The industrious three, who might have done better in better company, went to work again for the space of a few minutes; but the next inarticulate gurgle, preliminary always to Blake's speech, -a sort of rising-bell to ring up somnolent attention, brought them