allads, or joined
Tom Moore's songs to operatic airs. On other nights there would be an
original essay or poem read aloud, or else a play of Shakspeare, with
the parts distributed to different members; and these amusements
failing, some interesting discussion was likely to take their place.
Occasionally, in the dramatic season, large delegations from the farm
would drive into Boston, in carriages and waggons, to the opera or the
play. Sometimes, too, the young women sang as they washed the dishes
in the Hive; and the youthful yeomen of the society came in and helped
them with their work. The men wore blouses of a checked or plaided
stuff, belted at the waist, with a broad collar folding down about the
throat, and rough straw hats; the women, usually, simple calico gowns
and hats." All this sounds delightfully Arcadian and innocent, and it
is certain that there was something peculiar to the clime and race in
some of the features of such a life; in the free, frank, and stainless
companionship of young men and maidens, in the mixture of manual
labour and intellectual flights--dish-washing and aesthetics,
wood-chopping and philosophy. Wordsworth's "plain living and high
thinking" were made actual. Some passages in Margaret Fuller's
journals throw plenty of light on this. (It must be premised that she
was at Brook Farm as an occasional visitor; not as a labourer in the
Hive.)

"All Saturday I was off in the woods. In the evening we had
a general conversation, opened by me, upon Education, in its
largest sense, and on what we can do for ourselves and
others. I took my usual ground:--The aim is perfection;
patience the road. Our lives should be considered as a
tendency, an approximation only.... Mr. R. spoke admirably
on the nature of loyalty. The people showed a good deal of
the _sans-culotte_ tendency in their manners, throwing
themselves on the floor, yawning, and going out when they
had heard enough. Yet as the majority differ with me, to
begin with--that being the reason this subject was
chosen--they showed on the whole more interest and
deference than I had expected. As I am accustomed to
deference, however, and need it for the boldness and
animation which my part requires, I did not speak with as
much force as usual.... Sunday.--A glorious day; the woods
full of perfume; I was out all the morning. In the afternoon
Mrs. R. and I