Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs

by John Thomas Codman

There was enough reason and brave common sense among the people to ponder on the condition of things as I have presented them to you. The outlook was not encouraging. I cannot remember the order in which some of the events came to pass which I am to narrate, but the order is unimportant. Certainly there were Association meetings in which prospects were talked over and counsel was demanded and taken from one and another. Unfortunately for this story I was not at them. Doubtless I was in the quiet of the Eyry, dreaming daylight dreams, musing and listening to Fanny Dwight's deft piano playing, while she was filling me with the mysteries of Schubert and Mendelssohn and Beethoven, or else wandering about the farm, with no special aim but to find rest and enjoyment in my leisure hours. These meetings were serious, grave and often protracted. There were some who thought matters could be better managed. This is not strange, for it is always so. There were those who thought that some, particularly among the earlier members, though not absolutely non-producers, should be turned off or made more productive; but this was difficult to do. Expansion was the only true policy, and the fates seemed to be against it. Outside of the meetings and in daily life all seemed to be in harmony.

I had now lived more than two years at the farm. I, the pale city lad, had grown brown under the sun's warm kisses. I fancy I was not rosy, but the bright eyes and the clear complexion, free from speck or blemish, gave the certain indications of health. I had tasted of the actual farm work. I had planted beans, potatoes and melons. I had hoed corn, and on my knees weeded, in the broiling sun, the young onions. I had driven horse to plough, and side by side with others, trying to hoe my row with them, disputed, discussed social questions and ideas, and chaffed one another on our personal gifts and peculiarities while working together in the different groups. I had not hewed wood, but I had chopped brush. I had yoked and driven the oxen, and the first time had a difficulty with them because I tried to yoke the off ox on the nigh side; and when I graduated into the greenhouse group I learned all the mysteries of the care of plants, potting, transplanting, making leaf-mould and doing spade and rake work to perfection; and in the laying out of beds and walks did a full share of shovel-work on the sandy and gravelly soil, and drove the dump-cart.

Oh, the independence of it! To be able to do everything, and with love of it, knowing no high or low of work—all of it honor, and no shame in any of it! It is the surroundings that develop the manhood. Was I working for myself? Was I working for any other man or person? No, it was for all of us that I did it. Did I and we not have the example of great minds and greater hearts? We did. One day whilst the shop was erecting, our mason, who was on the roof building the chimney, was waiting for his helper, who had not returned from his dinner or had been called away; and as he wanted bricks very much, I carried some hodsful up the ladder to him in the genuine Emeraldic fashion.

(Arise not from shades profound, to frown on me, Abraham, thou honest "Rail Splitter!" Arise not, warlike, Ulysses, thou "Tanner." Hide thyself away! Shake not thy cottony locks at me, thou pale-faced "Bobbin Boy!" Be not too jealous of your unique titles. I shall never aspire to so glorious a one as "Hod Carrier." I have not earned it. I did it but once, and shall never do it again! Rest easy!)

And now, at eventide, whilst the Solons of the little commonwealth were making laws, solving problems and building defences against the common enemy—the wolf of penury and hunger—I was sitting on the steps or on the low window-sills at the Eyry, meditating and thinking ever of the beautiful things with which I was surrounded; thinking of the glowworms I found in the path to Cow Island, their wonderful beauty, and how like illuminated pearls were their tiny lamps, and when I touched them how they rolled themselves into a coil that resembled the pin of pearls my mother wore on her bosom, only they were more beautiful; thinking that their lights translated into words were even more beautiful than their phosphorescent hues, for they said, "Come to me, my love!"

I was thinking of the bobolinks that twittered and sung, and seemed to tumble upward as well as downward in the air over the waving grass on the meadow; or I heard behind in the dim oak woods the whip-lash sound of the notes of the whippoorwill, repeated a hundred times on the air, while the round face of the moon looked down and made the shadows of the trees and the forest grow deeper and darker. Now and then I heard, when all was still, from his nesting-place, the brave yet delicate notes of the song sparrow, singing in his dreams from out a happy, overflowing heart. Dear little fluff of feathers!

I was thinking of the brood of young partridges I scared in the woods, and how like a flash, mysteriously and totally, they disappeared in the underbrush. I was thinking of the tiny newts and wonderful creatures I found in the shallow water in the meadow ditch. I was thinking that if the saracenas were in bloom I would go to find some of them on the morrow; or if the brilliant cardinals were, I would hunt for them at the brookside; or if there were any yellow violets to be had I wanted to find them, as I had found many varieties.

Then I turned my head and listened more earnestly to the music or to the conversation in the parlor, of inspired men and women, talking in low, conversational tones, with now and then a spice of wit, on art, religion, science or the lives of great painters, musicians, artists and reformers. Or I was looking to see if the "Northern Cross" had appeared among the constellations above the horizon. Or maybe I heard George W. Curtis, who had come to visit his old teachers, singing the "Erl King" or "Good-night to Julia" or plaintive "Kathleen Mavourneen" in his inimitable way. Perhaps I was deep in social science or restudyiug some of Fourier's pleasant fancies, such as the rivalries of groups of nice children with his little hordes of brats and "rushers"—to use a modern word—and how in nature's scheme their different talents so balanced one another as to make complete harmony.

I was thinking of the big boulders that join and make a hole we called "the cave," over which Hawthorne's fancy made the apostle Eliot preach to the Indians, giving it the name of "Eliot's Pulpit," and describing it afterward so prettily in his "Blithedale Romance"; a book of which Emerson speaks, and truly, as "that disagreeable story," and of some of the sketches in it as "quite unworthy of his genius." And I was thinking of the retired little dell in the far "Wisconsin Lot," where doubtless he and others have taken their volumes and note-books, writing and reading to the music of the hum of the bees, the sighing pines and the redbreasts.

I was thinking of the unfortunate humanity who lived outside of our charmed circle, and how little they knew of the magnificent future the infinite Father has prepared for them and their descendants, and how from the beginning the plan has been coördinate with man's help to his brother man and his sister woman; and my whole soul was penetrated, even as it is now, with pity for the blindness, mental and physical, that cannot see how to use the gifts the Infinite holds out, patiently waiting for us to take from his indulgent hands. I was thinking how much, how very much, of all our suffering comes from human ignorance only.