tentatively applied. Three different
associations took their rise from among this handful of earnest
seekers after better social methods. Mr. Ballou, who headed one of
these, believed that unity and cohesion could be most surely obtained
by a frank avowal of beliefs, aims, and practices, to which all
present and future associates would be expected to conform. Mrs.
Kirby, whose interesting volume* we have already quoted, says that
the platform of this party bound them to abolitionism, anti-orthodoxy,
women's rights, total abstinence, and opposition to war. They
established themselves at Hopedale, Massachusetts, where, so far as
our knowledge goes, some vestige of them may still remain, though the
analogies and probabilities are all against such a survival. A second
band of "come-outers," as people used to be called in that day and
region, when they abandoned the common road for reasons not obviously
compulsory, went to Northampton in the same State, and from there
into corporate obscurity.

[* _Years of Experience._ New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1887.]

Mr. Ripley's scheme was more elastic, and if the money basis of the
association had been more solid, there seems no reason on the face of
things why this community at Brook Farm might not have enjoyed a much
longer lease of life. It seems to have left a most pleasant memory in
the minds of all who were ever members of it. In matters of belief
and of opinion no hard-and-fast lines were drawn at any point. In
matters of conduct, the morality of self-respecting New-Englanders
who were at a farther remove from Puritanic creeds than from
Puritanic discipline, was regarded as a sufficient guarantee of
social decorum. Of the earliest additions to the co-operative
household, a sprinkling were already Catholic; others, including the
wife and the niece of the founder, afterwards became so. Some
attended orthodox Protestant churches; the majority were probably
Unitarians. Discussion on all subjects appears to have been free,
frank, and good-tempered.

There was no attempt made at any communism except that of
intellectual and social gifts and privileges. There was a common
table, and Mrs. Kirby has given us some attractive glimpses of the
good feeling, and kindly gayety, and practical observance of the
precept to "bear one another's burdens" which came into play around
it. For many months, as no one could endure to have his equal serve
him, and all were equals, there was a const