The standard work is by Lindsay Swift. Brook Farm: its Members, Scholars, and Visitors. 1900. (Contains bibliography.)
Codman, J. T. Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs. 1894.
Cooke, G. W. John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-Farmer, Editor, and Critic of Music. 1898.
Frothingham, O. B. George Ripley. 1882. (A. M. L. Ser.)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Blithedale Romance. 1852.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Passages from the American Notebooks. 1868. 2 vols.
CHAPTER XIV
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was born in Boston. He came from old Puritan stock, several of his direct ancestors being clergymen. He was one of eight children, of whom six were living when his father, the Reverend William Emerson, died in 1811. Mr. Emerson had been so beloved by his parishioners that they continued to pay his salary for seven years, and for three years gave the use of the parish house to the family. The nature of these years is presented in the essay on “Domestic Life”:
Who has not seen, and who can see unmoved, under a low roof, the eager, blushing boys discharging as they can their household chores, and hastening into the sitting-room to the study of to-morrow’s merciless lesson, yet stealing time to read one chapter more of the novel hardly smuggled into the tolerance of father and mother—atoning for the same by some passages of Plutarch or Goldsmith; the warm sympathy with which they kindle each other in school-yard, or barn, or wood-shed, with scraps of poetry or song, with phrases of the last oration or mimicry of the orator; the youthful criticism, on Sunday, of the sermons; the school declamation, faithfully rehearsed at home.... Ah, short-sighted students of books, of nature, and of man, too happy could they know their advantages, they pine for freedom from that mild parental yoke; they sigh for fine clothes, for rides, for the theatre, and premature freedom and dissipation which others possess. Woe to them if their wishes were crowned. The angels that dwell with them, and are weaving laurels of life for their youthful brows, are Toil, and Want, and Truth, and Mutual Faith.