Otis Clapp, Boston, Mass. William W. Story, Boston, Mass. T. Wentworth
Higginson, Boston, Mass. James Russell Lowell, Cambridge, Mass. J. A.
Saxton, Deerfield, Mass. Francis George Shaw, West Roxbury, Mass. John
G. Whittier, Amesbury, Mass.
Other contributors were:—
E. P. Grant of Ohio. A. J. H. Duganne of Philadelphia.
The Brook Farm writers were:—
George Ripley. John S. Dwight. Charles A. Dana. Lewis K. Ryckman.
In the second volume are two more of the Channing family as
contributors, Dr. William F. and Walter, and also the name of James
Freeman Clarke, of Boston, with an additional writer from Brook
Farm—John Orvis.
Mr. Ripley and Mr. Dana wrote most of the editorial Associative articles. Mr. Dana was the principal reviewer, and noticed the new books. Mr. Dwight wrote an occasional article on Association, reviewed, and attended to the musical and poetical department. He also earnestly advocated the doctrines of social and industrial life suggested by Fourier. Translations in prose and poetry were common. Parke Godwin and W. H. Channing assisted in translations or selections from Fourier's writings. George William Curtis wrote the musical correspondence from New York, and among the poetical contributions in the first volume, is one from J. G. Whittier, "To My Friend on the Death of His Sister," and five poems by Cranch, Higginson, Story, Lowell and Duganne; also poetic translations from the German by Dwight and Dana, as well as original poems by them.
The paper was not local. It aimed high as a purely literary and critical as well as progressive journal, and I must ever consider it a fault that it did not chronicle more of Brook Farm life. We look almost in vain through its pages for one word of its situation, finding none except in some allusions to it in the correspondence from abroad. Occasionally the school was advertised in a corner, but for the rest it might as well have been published elsewhere as at Brook Farm. The leaders, feeling that the life there was an experiment, and perhaps a doubtful one, were not disposed to gratify a curiosity which they probably considered morbid, by yielding to it. This was a mistake. It was a mistake, as much as it would be for us to leave out of our letters to our friends the petty incidents of daily life, and describe only grand principles and outside events. It is only to those loved most by us that we recite the trivial things, for we know that those trivialities link us closer than anything else, filling all the chinks in our friendship or love. It was a disappointment to those who desired to know often of the spirit of the workers, and of the little events that happened there, not to find more notices of them.
In many other respects the Harbinger was a grand success. In all that pertained to music, criticism, poetry and progress no journal stood higher. I cannot tell of its pecuniary success for I do not find any memorandum of its finances. The first number commenced with a story translated from the French of George Sand (Madame Dudevant) entitled "Consuelo"—in some respects the sweetest story she ever wrote. It was translated by our neighbor, Mr. Francis G. Shaw, who would oftentimes mount his horse, and, with his little boy, a tiny fellow, on a pony by his side, gallop over to see us. How hard it is for me to realize that afterward the same little fellow, as Col. Robert G. Shaw, led his colored regiment through fire and smoke and the whizzing bullets up to the cannon's mouth of bloody Fort Wagner, and there laid down his life for his country.
Francis George Shaw was of a Boston family and a gentleman of means. He took great interest in our experiment and its hoped-for results. I have not words to praise his kindness, and his gentlemanly manner and bearing towards us all. He looked on life from a high standpoint. Wealth did not corrupt him. He was a Christian in large heartedness and philanthropy. He recognized his Maker's image in all men; the garment he saw through; the color he saw through; and he desired above all things the education, progress and culture of all the human family.