Emerson is not so well pleased with our departure as he would be with our company, but as he did nothing to keep us we must go. It appeared to me that for the hopefulness of many, it was needful we should make a movement of some kind this year, even though we fail; and Providence seems really to have worked for us.... I thank you very much for the £10; the note arrived very opportunely to enable Mr. A. to quit Concord, to do which all his debts must be paid, and I need not tell you on whom that falls. Our transactions at present leave me about 500 dollars in debt, but every one says we have made a good bargain in the purchase of the land. I seriously hope we are forming the basis for something really progressive, call it family or community, or what you will.... We have now plenty of work to do and how we get on I shall faithfully report, though the pen will not do much at present.... Believe me, dear friend, Yours steadfastly in the spirit, CHARLES LANE. * * * * * Mr. Sanborn, who above all others has an intimate knowledge of what the situation was, having in later years learned much concerning it from Emerson and Alcott and others of that time, makes this comment in his “Bronson Alcott”:— “After looking at several places in Concord and elsewhere, Lane decided to buy the Wyman farm at Harvard, two miles from the village of that name, but less than a mile from Still River, another village in the same township. Alcott would have chosen the Cliffs in Concord, a favorite resort of Thoreau and the Emerson family, and Emerson would have preferred to retain his friend in his own town; but Lane had rather avoided Emerson, as not ascetic enough for his abstemious habits, and seems to have been not unwilling to withdraw Alcott from what he regarded as an unfavorable influence.” But when it was all settled, Alcott and his English Mystics entered into their plan with a touching enthusiasm. Before them lay vistas of glowing possibilities. They dreamed dreams and saw visions of a “Peace on Earth, Good Will towards Men” such as had never before been realized. There was much to be done and they were eager to begin,—the days were none too long in which to collect the necessary things before moving to Harvard. So Charles Lane persuaded Samuel Bowers to write to Oldham a description of the farm, he himself being too busy to do so. And Bowers writes as follows:—