My feelings, (for I have a large bump of sympathy) were of that pleasurable kind which Jack must have experienced, when he saw the castle, which in a single night had established itself on the top of his bean-pole; or which enlivened the bosom of Aladdin, when he saw the beautiful palace, which in a night had travelled from the genii's dominions to the waste field, which it then beautified; and I felt truly rejoiced that my industrious neighbor's works of darkness were not always deeds of evil. But alack for the poor spinster, when it came my turn to be cleaning up!
VISITS TO THE SHAKERS.
A FIRST VISIT.
Sometime in the summer of 18—, I paid a visit to one of the Shaker villages in the State of New York. Previously to this, many times and oft had I (when tired of the noise and contention of the world, its erroneous opinions, and its wrong practices) longed for some retreat, where, with a few chosen friends, I could enjoy the present, forget the past, and be free from all anxiety respecting any future portion of time. And often had I pictured, in imagination, a state of happy society, where one common interest prevailed—where kindness and brotherly love were manifested in all of the every-day affairs of life—where liberty and equality would live, not in name, but in very deed—where idleness, in no shape whatever, would be tolerated—and where vice of every description would be banished, and neatness, with order, would be manifested in all things.
Actually to witness such a state of society was a happiness which I never expected. I thought it to be only a thing among the airy castles which it has ever been my delight to build. But with this unostentatious and truly kind-hearted people, the Shakers, I found it; and the reality, in beauty and harmony, exceeded even the picturings of imagination.
No unprejudiced mind could, for a single moment, resist the conviction that this singular people, with regard to their worldly possessions, lived in strict conformity to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. There were men in this society who had added to the common stock thousands and tens of thousands of dollars; they nevertheless labored, dressed, and esteemed themselves as no better, and fared in all respects like those who had never owned, neither added to the society, any worldly goods whatever. The cheerfulness with which they bore one another's burdens made even the temporal calamities, so unavoidable among the inhabitants of the earth, to be felt but lightly.
This society numbered something like six hundred persons, who in many respects were differently educated, and who were of course in possession of a variety of prejudices, and were of contrary dispositions and habits. Conversing with one of their elders respecting them, he said, "You may say that these were rude materials of which to compose a church, and speak truly: but here (though strange it may seem) they are worked into a building, with no sound of axe or hammer. And however discordant they were in a state of nature, the square and the plumb-line have been applied to them, and they now admirably fit the places which they were designed to fill. Here the idle become industrious, the prodigal contracts habits of frugality, the parsimonious become generous and liberal, the intemperate quit the tavern and the grog-shop, the debauchee forsakes the haunts of dissipation and infamy, the swearer leaves off the habits of profanity, the liar is changed into a person of truth, the thief becomes an honest man, and the sloven becomes neat and clean."