Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs

by John Thomas Codman

The round of daily life this season was little varied from that of the past, but there was more activity and more crowding. A great many makeshifts were had to enable persons who wished to visit the place to get even lodging for a night, for no one knew who or how many were coming before the evening coach arrived. Oftentimes it came full, when it seemed there was not a sleeping place to be found on the domain. The Association buildings overflowed, and a neighboring house was leased and occupied just across the road, by the Hive. It was sometimes called the "Nest," and had been hired in the first days of the "Community." Even then every corner was filled.

There was some income from this crowd of visitors, and at the same time the work and system of the place were much retarded, for as carriage after carriage and vehicle after vehicle came, each one would require an attendant, who was taken from labor, and when the regular attendants were all occupied the horn would be sounded to see if anyone of the shoemakers or printers or farmers or teachers would leave his work and volunteer for this duty.

Frequently all these visitors would leave as suddenly as they came, and would only give their thanks, not even being of a single cent's immediate value to the place for the outlay of time taken from productive labor. Sometimes a growl would be heard because a trifle was taken for the expense of meals, or about the absence of feathers in the beds, by some visitor who intruded himself uninvited. I pitied the Dormitory Group, running from house to house at edge of evening to find a stray corner to lodge a guest; seeking out the rooms of absent members, and hunting up towels, furnishings and fittings, through all the pleasant summer weather. But this was cheerfully done for "the cause," and much more had to be done.

Our lecturers were wanted—men who were in practical associative life, and they were taken from remunerative work to speak to the public. Thus we entered into the summer, and the beautiful grass waved again on the meadow; the pleasant lights gleamed again from the Eyry windows; the pure moon looked down on the summer fields; the merry voices of the young and happy folks were heard as the farmers came up from the fields, and the horn sounded its "toot-toot" as a signal for all to join at meals.

I was in the gardener's department, assisting him in the care of the greenhouse plants and making flower beds, but our especial work was laying out and planting a large garden which should be a permanent addition to the beauty of the place, and a future source of income. On the farm was a fine imported bull who did not seem to be doing his share of work in our very industrious place, so a ring was put in his nose and he was my especial charge in the way of a team. It appears cruel to one who for the first time sees a bull led by the nose, but there seems to be no reason why a bull should complain, when there are so many humans continually led through life in the same fashion.

In fact the bull throve and had in some ways considerable sense. He was harnessed into a tipcart and we made him work for us. He was a strong, powerful fellow, and has carried his eighty loads of gravel a day, from one part of the garden to the other. At noon I would relieve him of his harness and mount his back for a ride to the barn. I would then be the "observed of all observers." Sometimes, for the frolic, I would load my cart with young misses and dump them at the Hive door, backing up to it in the most approved style of an old "gee-haw" farmer.

"Prince Albert," the bull, was a gem. He worked admirably. He never gave me any trouble, or anyone else human, but when stalled near the oxen he had a peculiar fancy to poke his horns into them. Early one morning, by some mischance, he got loose in the barn, and "going" for one of them frightened him so much that he also broke loose, and in trying to make his escape from the bull, backed into the barn-room. There was a large trap door in it, and the ox ventured on it, breaking it, and fell through. The bull was so close behind that he could not escape, and they dropped together into the little room below, the door of which was open. The ox escaped into the yard, and ran for dear life around the front of the Hive, pursued by the bull. Whether the jar of the fall, his escape, or his quiet disposition sobered him I know not, but he soon fell into a jog-trot pursuit, and was caught and returned by a neighboring farmer.

There was great roaring and noise in the fracas, which was of short duration, but long enough to bring out the men from the Hive to witness the affair. The General, who had been sleeping a little late—probably he had been baking bread the night before—made his appearance from his little room on the ground floor, with boot on one foot and shoe on the other, just as it was all over, with the impatient inquiry, "W-w-what is it all about?" On an explanation of the affair being made, the next question he asked, in all earnestness, soberness and simplicity, was "W-h-o-i-c-h came out ahead?" The personal appearance and manner of the General, and the absurd question, uttered in a vehement and stammering way, touched a ludicrous spot in the minds of the spectators so permanently that should you ask one of them to-day, "Which came out ahead?" he will smile or give you a shout of laughter in return.

It took but little to amuse, sometimes, for on one of the beautiful summer days at nooning time, a group of men were resting in the shade of the arbor that was on an island artificially made in the brook below the terraces in front of the Hive, breathing the pure, balmy air of outdoors instead of the indoor air of the workshop, reclining on the thick greensward, when some two or three essayed the not very difficult feat of jumping the merrily running brook, from embankment to embankment, and dared Tirrell, one of the number, to follow. He was the oldest and a little less supple than the others; and in trying the jump deliberately landed about three inches short of the opposite bank, knee deep in the water. It was, as the young people say, "too funny for anything," but equally funny to the lookers-on to see the amused Chiswell, one of his mates, roll over and over on the greensward in repeated convulsions of side-splitting laughter, whilst the others, standing up, had hard work to keep their perpendicular and writhed in awful shapes as they joined in chorus with him, as Tirrell was slowly wading out of the water up the embankment.

Trouble in financial affairs still existed. Cash in large amount was not received, and it was perilous times with the Direction. When the fall of the year came, it was announced that we must retrench our meagre diet, to enable us to go on until our labor could pay us better—until we could improve our employments and enlarge the institution so that there could be more producers—and it was submitted to without much complaint.