It was at Brook Farm that Dana first made the acquaintance of Horace Greeley, who, himself a student of Fourier, was interested in the Roxbury experiment, so much more idealistic than Fourierism itself.
Dana took Brook Farm seriously, but he was not one of the poseurs of the colony. No smocks for him, no long hair! He wore a full, auburn beard, but he wore a beard all the rest of his life. He was a handsome, slender youth, and he got mental and physical health out of every minute at the farm. By day he was busy teaching, keeping the association’s books, milking, waiting on table, or caring for the fruit-trees. He was the most useful man on the farm. At night, when the others danced, he was at his books or his writings.
He wrote articles for the Harbinger, and for the Dial, which succeeded the Harbinger as the official organ of the Transcendentalists. Dr. Ripley was the editor of the Harbinger, and he had such brilliant contributors as James Russell Lowell and George William Curtis; but Dana was his mainstay. He wrote book-reviews, editorial articles and notes, and not a little verse. His “Via Sacra” is typical of the thoughtful youth:
Slowly along the crowded street I go,
Marking with reverent look each passer’s face,
Seeking, and not in vain, in each to trace
That primal soul whereof he is the show.
For here still move, by many eyes unseen,
The blessed gods that erst Olympus kept;
Through every guise these lofty forms serene