My Friends at Brook Farm Part 4

The bubbles that break on the lips are past mending. The effervescence and sparkle of wine can only be known as the gla.s.s is filled. The fine art of conversation can be perfected only by choice spirits whose hearts are light, whose sprightly wit, gay good humor and alert intelligence make their utterances almost intoxicating.

Some attempts have been made to chronicle famous Brook Farm conversations but the best record could hardly be more than a jest book.

The alert sallies and quick retorts, the pat allusions and apt quotations, the exaggerations, the absurdities, the shrewd witticisms, the searching satires, the puns and improvised nonsense verses might possibly have been registered on paper, but the spirit of merriment, of good fellows.h.i.+p and mutual understanding that made thoughts to live and words to sing--the spirit of Brook Farm--no snap-shot camera could ever have caught.

These talks were not all for fun, either. Happy and blithesome, the Farmers were, at heart, earnestly devoted to purposes held sacred. They were inspired by high ideals. n.o.ble conceptions and beautiful beliefs found expression in fitting phrase. Rippling mirth flowed in an undercurrent of serious, sincere faith and hope and love.

One more matter may be referred to in connection with our recreations, namely, there was no hunting over our acres. The woods became a refuge for birds and small game. No gun was ever heard there, and the shyest creatures learned they were safe, among friends who loved them. Rabbits excepted. Under Mr. Hosmer's direction we boys trapped rabbits industriously, not for sport but to prevent them overrunning the place.

From the traps they were transferred to the warren and thence either to the kitchen or to market.

Gray squirrels troubled us some by raiding the cornfield next the woods but their depredations were not very extensive. Ex-president Jefferson had the same trouble at Monticello, the squirrels destroying the outside rows of his cornfield. His feeble-minded brother conceived the brilliant idea of checkmating the little robbers by not planting any outside rows.

The Farmers improved on this plan by planting an extra outside row for the gray thieves to feed on.

CHAPTER VII

THE SCHOOL

Education at Brook Farm began in the kindergarten--only we did not know it. The word was not in the dictionaries of that period, and Froebel was yet to be heard of in Ma.s.sachusetts; but the rudiments of the kindergarten system were devised and put in practice by our folk in response to a new demand. The little ones, too old for the nursery and too young for the school, demanded some adequate provision for their care while their mothers were at work. In the community the one person best suited to fill any requirement was directed to the undertaking by natural selection. This was one of the normal though scarcely recognized results of the organization of industry Among the many workers there was always one who could do whatever was to be done better than any of the others, and to this one, young or old, man or woman, full charge of the work was given.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Pioneer Kindergarten]

The one person best qualified to take charge of these toddlers was a charming young lady, Miss Abby Morton, whose sincere interest in children invariably gained their young affections. Miss Morton gathered her group of older babies on the gra.s.s or under the elms whenever weather permitted and at other times in the parlor of Pilgrim Hall. Her first object was to make them happy and contented, and to this end she invented and, arranged games and songs and stories, contrived little incidents and managed little surprises with never failing ingenuity.

Learning as well as teaching, she gradually gave a purposeful bent to her song-and-dance diversions, making them effective lessons as well as pleasant pastimes. Health and strength for the growing babies were promoted by proper exercises, a good carriage and graceful movement of little arms and legs being duly considered. Polite manners, and the correct use of language were taught by precept and example. More than all, the juvenile minds were, directly and indirectly, drilled to acquire the habit of paying attention.

The power of paying attention, of concentrating the whole force of the mind on one object, is a native gift. Those who are endowed with this gift are the men and women destined for high careers. They command confidence. They are leaders in great undertakings. Success attends them, humanly speaking, with certainty. There is, also, the faculty of taking notice, of becoming consciously aware of the impressions received by the senses. This faculty man shares with the animals below him in the scale of being, and, in both man and brute, it is susceptible to cultivation. Training the faculty of observation develops the habit of paying attention, and this habit, though less efficient than the inborn gift, may be so confirmed as to become second nature.

Whatever the community accomplished or failed to accomplish, the Brook Farm School rendered important service in educational progress by demonstrating the practicability of cultivating the habit of attention.

The teachers in all cla.s.ses and in all lessons throughout the school made ceaseless efforts to win and hold attention. This was not incidental or accidental, but was an integrate part of the educational plan, intelligently designed and deliberately pursued, with intent to train the pupils in the practice of concentrating their minds on the one thing before them until it became a fixed habit.

Years after the Brook Farm School had closed its doors, I was called to enter another school--the awful school of war. The first word I had to learn in that school was the command, "Attention!"

Attention means life or death to the soldier; victory or defeat to the army. In civil life it aids incalculably in promoting prosperity, the ability to give instant attention to matters coming up for consideration being one of the first qualifications of the successful business man.

And if he has not such ability originally it may be imparted to him as a habit, by early training. Miss Morton did not begin too early; and the teachers who followed her did not persist too earnestly in the endeavor to impress this habit deeply on the minds of their pupils.

When my own children were beginning to be interested in juvenile literature, they found great pleasure in reading again and again "The William Henry Letters" and other stories by Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz. On making inquiry I was much gratified to learn that Mrs. Diaz was our Abby Morton of the Brook Farm Kindergarten. It was no wonder she could write letters and stories appealing to children. Her understanding and her sympathies brought her in close touch with them. She knew their minds and their hearts, their likes and their dislikes and what she wrote of them and for them they accepted, knowing that every word was true to nature. It is observable too, that in her writings she still holds to the purpose of ill.u.s.trating to her young readers the necessity of early acquiring the habit of paying attention.

Brook Farm was practically an industrial school, though not so named. It was the first I ever heard of where instruction in the useful arts was regularly given as a part of the educational course. The fine arts were not very extensively taught at the time, and all we had was literature, drawing, music, and dancing. These four studies were very well supplied with good teachers, everything the school promised to do being well done, but they were not given nearly so much time as the industrial arts. Every pupil old enough to work was expected to give two hours every Monday and Tuesday, and every Thursday and Friday to work under an instructor in the shops on the farm, in the garden or the household. The pupils could select their own work and could make a change of occupation with consent of the instructor. No one was obliged to take the Industrial course, but very few declined, even the aristocratic Spaniards taking hold of work like good fellows as they were. Idling was not in fas.h.i.+on.

I worked, for a while, four hours every day in the week. Cedar was found competent to act as first a.s.sistant to the president--in the cow-stable.

Care of the cow being regarded as a disagreeable duty, Dr. Ripley took it upon himself, just as Mrs. Ripley took the scrubbing of the kitchen floor. Mrs. Ripley had other little matters to look after, general oversight of the girls, teaching Greek, entertaining distinguished guests, writing clever musical plays for the Festal Series, etc., but she kept the floor clean all the same.

In my honorable office I succeeded Nathaniel Hawthorne. The president and Cedar arose at 5 A. M., fed and milked 18 or 20 cows, and cleared up the stable. We bathed, dressed and breakfasted at 8 A. M. At 9 A. M. Dr.

Ripley was in his office and I in the school room. In the evening two hours more were given to the cows. I liked the work, liked the cows, and especially liked to be with Dr. Ripley. His flattering report that Cedar could milk like a streak secured for me the maximum wage, ten cents an hour, so that, at twelve years of age or thereabouts I was earning nearly enough to pay the cost of board and lodging.

The milkers were necessarily late at breakfast and supper and these meals we took with the waiters, the pleasantest company in the dining room. Dr. and Mrs. Ripley were charming table companions and the bright girls were merry as happy children. Perhaps Cedar did not fill Hawthorne's place quite so well at table as in the stable, but there were no intimations given to that effect. Making the most of the present moment was in order. Looking backward was not.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the first members to join the community and was one of the first to leave it. He thought he could do better than to spend his time and energy in digging over a manure-pile with a dung fork. Do better he certainly did, for himself and for the world.

I have been asked more than once if the ill.u.s.trious, poetic and romantic Hawthorne did actually feed the pigs at Brook Farm. My answer is that I do not know as I was not there during his residency, but I think he did not, my reason for thinking he did not being that there were no pigs to feed. The suggestion may have arisen from a pa.s.sage in his Notes when he speaks of going out with Rev. John Allen to buy a litter of pigs. Minot Pratt, our head farmer, had some sort of interest in a place across the brook, and there may have been a pig-pen there, but if there was one on our place it was unknown to sharp-eyed youngsters who knew every rabbit-run in the woods, and every swallow's hole in the sand banks.

Many of the farmers were vegetarians and most of them had a Hebraic aversion to pork. That viand was never seen on the table except with the baked beans always served on Sunday; Mother Rykeman managing to keep on hand a supply of middlings for the bean-pot.

Hawthorne cherished kindly memories of Brook Farm and these memories embodied in the Blithedale Romance show his warm and appreciative interest in the life of the community. I fail to find anything like the portrait-painting which others have discovered in the delineations of Blithedale characters. There are personal traits alluded to suggestive of Dr. Ripley, of Georgiana Bruce, of Orestes Brownson and others, but these hints are not definite enough to identify them with the personages of the book. As to the a.s.sumption that Margaret Fuller served as a model for Zen.o.bia, that seems to me so far fetched as to be near absurdity.

Hawthorne visited Brook Farm occasionally, and I remember seeing him, a large, handsome man, walking up and down the Knoll or seated under the big elm, alone. He had not then attained fame and did not attract attention as a celebrity.

My industrial education was not confined to the cow-stable. At different times I worked in the green-house with John Codman, in the fields and meadows with everybody, and in the orchard and tree-nursery with Mr.

Dana. On one occasion teacher and pupil were sitting on the ground, budding peach-seedlings, when a stranger approached and demanded a hearing. Gerrish had brought him out and had directed him to Vice President Dana as the authority he should consult. "Free speech, here,"

said the vice-president, without looking up from his work.

Speaking freely, the visitor announced that his mission was to save souls, and he had a message of warning to deliver to sinners in danger of eternal punishment. What he wanted was to have the people called together that he might exhort them as to the terror of the wrath to come.

"Our people do not need to be called. They come together every evening without calling."

"Can I have an opportunity to address them this evening?" asked the missionary.

"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-fas.h.i.+oned, 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sisted 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 a.s.sist a scholar who could not be "smart" but who could be grateful, as he always has been.

The cla.s.s rooms were in the Cottage, Pilgrim Hall and Dr. Ripley's library. We were allowed five minutes to go from one cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses, at meals, at work, at play, everywhere and always punctuality was required by rule and enforced by the pressure of circ.u.mstances. 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 cla.s.ses were held in the amphitheater, under the elms, on the rocky or the gra.s.sy slopes of the Knoll. Of course there were many lessons that could be given only in cla.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sociation. 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 ill.u.s.trating 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 surpa.s.sing 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.

Instruction was not confined to the studies of the cla.s.ses. Except in the hours when pupils were left to their own devices, there was always a teacher or a guardian at hand giving intelligent direction to whatever was going on, maintaining discipline in the fundamental requirement of paying strict attention, and imparting information respecting the subject in hand.

By way of ill.u.s.tration it may be noted that Minot Pratt was the head farmer during the early days and a good farmer he proved to be. He not only worked wonders with the poor soil of the place but managed at the same time to give a deal of thought and care to his industrial cla.s.ses.

The boys and girls who elected to work in the fields and gardens with Minot Pratt received many a valuable lesson in botany, agricultural chemistry, and the planting, cultivating and harvesting of crops.