Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs

by John Thomas Codman

Miss Louisa M. Alcott wrote of him in connection with her father and herself, in an article entitled "A Journey to Fruitlands." Judging from my remembrance of all the characters, the picture is faithfully drawn.

Among the odd visitors the climax was reached, when a man came to pass a day and a night, who announced, that he had no need of sleep and had not slept for a year. The statement was passed by as a mere whim, we thinking of course that when night came he would not refuse a bed, but he did. After spending the evening at the Eyry, where the visitors were more especially entertained, he was notified that an attendant would show him to his bed, but he politely declined one, and as there seemed to be no other way, he was allowed to remain in an easy chair, with a lamp burning, after the household had retired.

It was late when Irish John Cheevers, our odd genius, prowling about the premises on his way to his room at the Cottage, saw the light in the Eyry parlor, and supposing some of the household were awake, went softly up and looked in at the window. There sat the visitor in the chair, asleep. He then went in, but his noise aroused the sleeper, and as John couldn't possibly keep his tongue still a minute, he said, "I beg your pardon, sir, I did not intend to disturb your sleep—not in the least, sir," in his palavering way, at which the stranger protested strongly that he hadn't been disturbed, as he had been awake all the time.

In the morning the stranger was there, still sitting in his chair, and declared he had passed the night pleasantly, but had not been asleep. Of course the improbability of the thing made, as the newspapers say, a "sensation." "By gad," said John, "I caught him asleep in the Eyry parlor. I did, upon my word; I did, my very self."

John wasn't inclined to be profane, but when anyone pretended to be what they were not, it aroused his combative spirit, and it was the "blank humbuggery of the thing" that mightily displeased him. But the time came when the laugh was against him. He had been in bed and slept some hours one summer night; it was the time of the full moon, when its transcendent beauty led the young folks to wander over the farm from house to house, to sit a while on the doorsteps or on the knoll at the Hive; to sing "Das Klinket" or such part songs as "Row gently here, my gondolier," or "The lone starry hours give me Love, when calm is the beautiful night," or anything else to let out the joyousness of their hearts. They were not wild, for they labored enough to take away the wildness that indolence brings, and to sober them down to the cheerful mood; and cheerily would talk to one another of the people around them, and of the hundred little excitements the novel life led them into, that were wanting elsewhere, and often it was an hour or two later than the usual time for rest, before they were in bed.

John had been to his couch, and when he awoke it was broad daylight. He dressed and went down to the Hive, and as some one was going away early to Boston, concluded to get the wagon ready. But first he looked into the kitchen; the door was unlocked, as it always was, day and night; there was no one there, and it was surely time some one should be up. He drew out the light wagon from under the shed, and went for the harness. All the time the universal stillness surprised him. Where could all the people be? He thought he would see how high the sun was, and looking up into the sky, beheld the full face of the most beautiful moon that ever shone on God's fair acres, when a new thought struck him, that he had mistaken moonshine for daylight. He wheeled the wagon into the shed, and then went for another long nap; but some of the young men, who hadn't been in bed a great while, overheard the movements, and had their laugh and fun out of it!

During the first spring and summer of my stay my hours were largely spent in the Farming Series, working in the various groups. I assisted at planting, hoeing and driving or leading the horses at the plough. I also helped the gardener, who arrived with plants, in the care of them and in the ornamentation of the place.

According to the science of Fourier, everything is naturally arranged in groups and series. A group consists of three or more individuals or things, and a number of similar groups together make a series. To have harmony in society requires the application of this law or arrangement to all the relations of daily life; or in other words, it is natural to be thus arranged in industrial and social life. The Brook Farmers, being ambitious to introduce a resemblance to such an organization—for it could be but very faintly shadowed by their few members—and also desirous to indoctrinate all into the idea of this natural arrangement, organized "groups and series" in the following manner as proposed in the new constitution. "Three or more persons combined for some object or labor" made a group; harmonic numbers for groups—three, five, seven, twelve, etc. A series consisted of three or more groups for a similar object, joined under one head or chief.

To illustrate the system we will suppose it to be the spring of the year. The Farming Series will then consist of the following groups: First, a Cattle Group, Which attends to the feeding, grooming and general care of the cattle—horses, cows, oxen, pigs, etc. It may include the milking of the cows, or that may be a group in itself under the name of the Milking Group. Second, a Plowing Group, who attend to the plowing of the fields. Third, a Nursery Group, who have the care of the young trees, grafting, budding, etc. Fourth, a Planting Group, which may later in the season change into a Hoeing Group, or into a Weeding Group, or into a Haying Group, or a separate organization for each may continue till the end of the season. Each chief of a group recorded the hours expended in labor in his group, so that it was possible to tell, at the end of a season, how many hours had been spent in a given occupation, as hoeing, weeding, planting, etc. These groups, each having a chief, formed the aforenamed series, and the heads, or "chiefs" of all the groups together elected the head of the series, who kept a record and had general charge of the work done under his management.

The Mechanical Series, consisting of shoemaking, carpentering, sash and blind-makers' groups, were usually the same persons the year around. If, however, the shoemaker was tired of his group, and could be spared, he took his hoe and rake, and went into some group in the Farming Series for a change of occupation; the hours he spent there were put to his credit on the book of the group in which he labored in that series.