From the Easy Chair, Volume 3

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS THIRD SERIES
NEW YORK HARPER AND BROTHERS MDCCCXCIV
Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS. ——— All rights reserved.

Strangely enough, Hawthorne is likely to be the chief future authority upon the romantic episode of Brook Farm. Those who had it at heart more than he whose faith and hope and energy were all devoted to its development, and many of whom have every ability to make a permanent record, have never done so, and it is already so much of a thing of the past that it will probably never be done. But the memory of the place and of the time has been recently pleasantly refreshed by the lecture of Mr. Emerson and the Note-Book of Hawthorne. Mr. Emerson, whose mind and heart are ever hospitable, was one of the chief, indeed the chiefest, figure in this country of the famous intellectual Renaissance of twenty-five years ago, which, as is generally the case, is historically known by its nickname of Transcendentalism, a spiritual fermentation from which some of the best modern influences of this country have proceeded.
In his late lecture upon the general subject, Mr. Emerson says that the mental excitement began to take practical form nearly thirty years ago, when Dr. Channing counselled with George Ripley upon the practicability of bringing thoughtful and cultivated people together and forming a society that should be satisfactory. That good attempt, says Emerson, with a sly smile, ended in an oyster supper with excellent wines. But a little later it was revived under better auspices, and as Brook Farm made a name which will not be forgotten. Mr. Emerson was never a resident, but he was sometimes a visitor and guest, and the more ardent minds of the romantic colony were always much under his influence. With his sensitively humorous eye he seizes upon some of the ludicrous aspects of the scene and reports them with arch gravity. The ladies again, he says, took cold on washing-days, and it was ordained that the gentlemen shepherds should hang out the clothes, which they punctually did; but a great anachronism followed in the evening, for when they began to dance the clothes-pins dropped plentifully from their pockets. And again: One hears the frequent statement of the country members that one man was ploughing all day and another was looking out of the window all day—perhaps drawing his picture, and they both received the same wages.