My Friends at Brook Farm

by John Van der Zee Sears

“You can,” said Mr. Dana, still busy, “but they have a way of not listening, sometimes. I’ll tell you what, if you are able and willing to preach a sound, old-fashioned, blue-blazes, and brimstone sermon, you will get an audience. I would like to hear a real scorcher, once more.”

So far from being encouraged the missionary hastily sought Gerrish and departed on that worthy teamster’s return trip to Boston.

How right was wise old Dogberry in his dictum that reading and writing come by nature. Nature surely favors some mortals, but to others she is not so generous. I was one of the others. My sister Althea picked up reading from the floor of the nursery, littered with our blocks and picture books. She needed no lesson in Webster’s First Reader, but Juferouw Van Antwerp had troubles of her own in elucidating to one, at least, of her little boys, the mysteries of a, b, ab and c, a, t, cat. Althea could write a fair hand while her slow brother was still struggling with pot hooks and hangers. She could always spell correctly without the aid of a Book, while to me the spelling lesson was the hardest of tasks. Her studies at the Farm were easy and light—mine, heavy and difficult.

One advantage of the high place of president’s assistant was that it gave Cedar two free hours when other pupils were doing their industrial stunts. These hours were devoted to study, and they were surely needed. Manual training came, perhaps, by nature and in the industrial course I progressed rapidly, but for the rest Miss Ripley was justified in her remark that Cedar was not a “smart” scholar. However, steady Dutch persistence compensated somewhat for lack of alert facility, and the dull boy’s lessons were fairly well learned, though at the cost of patient toil. In these out-of-school labors I was constantly assisted by kindly teachers. More than willing to aid a pupil trying to get on, these helpful instructors gave me many an hour during the four years I was with them, taking time from their own precious leisure to assist a scholar who could not be “smart” but who could be grateful, as he always has been.

The class rooms were in the Cottage, Pilgrim Hall and Dr. Ripley’s library. We were allowed five minutes to go from one class to another but that was all. The day was not long enough for all we wanted to do, and to be sharp on time was an absolute necessity; in the classes, at meals, at work, at play, everywhere and always punctuality was required by rule and enforced by the pressure of circumstances. There was no hurry-skurry to disturb the even tenor of the way but there was not a moment lost, and, while every movement was rapid, there were no false starts made. Undivided attention was given to the matter in hand at the moment and when that was disposed of, instantly the next thing in order was taken up in the same efficient fashion, as if it were the shutting of one book and the opening of another.

School work was done as far as practicable, out of doors. Teachers and pupils, like everyone else at Brook Farm, loved to be in the open. We lived in the free air so habitually that to be shut up in the house was an irksome restraint. All summer long classes were held in the amphitheater, under the elms, on the rocky or the grassy slopes of the Knoll. Of course there were many lessons that could be given only in class rooms, but recitations, examinations and mental exercises generally were relegated to regions beyond the threshold. Botany, geology, natural history and what was then called natural philosophy were taught among the rocks, in the woods and in the fields with illustrations from nature.

In the winter the school had to be housed, but except in stormy weather we managed to see a good deal of the sky. Study of the stars with the whole population of the place standing around in the snow while Dr. Ripley discoursed on the constellations—that was indeed an outdoor lesson worth remembering. Such a lesson might involve exposure to cold, but we were hardy and no one was harmed either at the moment or afterward by a little touch of temperature down toward the frost line.

Trees and plants were studied in the woods and fields. The botany class made excursions, gathering specimens of the flora on the Farm and in the neighborhood, with peripatetic lectures by the way. Instruction in geology was given on the rocks, hammer in hand. Birds and the animal life of the locality we became acquainted with at close quarters. They were tame and friendly, being protected, cared for and never disturbed, and we learned their ways habits and characteristics by intimate association. Kindness to animals was taught and practiced first, last and all the time, and every living creature from the ox at the plow to the swallow building in the sandbank was gentle and not afraid.

The only cruel thing we ever did was to cut down through the middle of an ant’s nest in the pine woods. Our Natural History Club, of which both old folk and young folk were members, made quite a thorough study of ants, at one time, and, for the purpose of illustrating a lesson, John Cheever drove a spade through the center of a nest and shoveled away, one half of it. There were several of these nests in the pines, each consisting of a pile of sand about two feet high and perhaps a yard across at the base, and the structure we examined was filled with chambers and galleries which we found were also extended a foot or so under ground. The destruction of the ant hill was regretted by some of the more scrupulous students, but the exhibit gave us more real knowledge of the industries, the habits of life, the architecture, the skill and the intelligence of the Formicidae, than we gained in any other way. We were immensely interested in these ant studies, and bought all the books about them we could find. Afterward I made a little book myself, giving the results of our investigations set forth in papers read at meetings of the Club, notes of experiments, and of Mr. Hosmer’s lectures or rather talks on the wonderful works of the Formicidae. The publication of this book marked my first appearance in the literary world.

Charles Hosmer was a born naturalist. Every form of life was of surpassing interest to him. In our walks abroad he saw everything there was to be seen. His observation was not only alert but was minute and accurate. He seemed to know every plant and insect and bird and animal on the Farm, and had something worth while to tell us about anything and everything that attracted attention.