n
must have been.

Gay and happy indeed were the dwellers in this community during the
early stages of its development. Ripley's theory of the wholesomeness of
combined manual and intellectual work ruled everywhere. He himself
donned the farmer's blouse, the wide straw hat, and the high boots in
which he has been pictured at Brook Farm; and whether he cleaned
stables, milked cows, carried vegetables to market, or taught philosophy
and discussed religion, he was unfailingly cheerful and inspiring.

Mrs. Ripley was in complete accord with her husband on all vital
questions, and as the chief of the Wash-Room Group worked blithely eight
or ten hours a day. Whether this devotion to her husband's ideals grew
out of her love for him, or whether she was really persuaded of the
truth of his theory, does not appear. In later life it is interesting to
learn that she sought in the Church of Rome the comfort which Ripley's
transcendentalism was not able to afford her. When she died in 1859 she
had held the faith of Rome for nearly a dozen years, and, curiously
enough, was buried as a Catholic from that very building in which her
husband had preached as a Unitarian early in their married life, the
church having in the interim been purchased by the Catholics. With just
one glimpse of the later Ripley himself, we must leave this interesting
couple. In 1866, when, armed with a letter of introduction from Emerson,
the original Brook Farmer sought Carlyle (who had once described him as
"a Socinian minister who had left his pulpit to reform the world by
cultivating onions"), and Carlyle greeted him with a long and violent
tirade against our government, Ripley sat quietly through it all, but
when the sage of Chelsea paused for breath, calmly rose and left the
house, saying no word of remonstrance.

It is, of course, however, in Hawthorne and his descriptions in the
"Blithedale Romance" of the life at Brook Farm that the principal
interest of most readers centres. This work has come to be regarded as
the epic of the community, and it is now generally conceded that
Hawthorne was in this novel far more of a realist than was at first
admitted. He did not avoid the impulse to tell the happenings of life at
the farm pretty nearly as he found them, and substantial as the
characters may or may not be, the daily life and doings, the scenery,
the surroundings, and even trivial details are presented with a
well-nigh faultless accuracy.

The chara