* * * * * ... At present I am situated thus. All the persons who have joined us during the summer have from some cause or other quitted, they say in consequence of Mr. Alcott’s despotic manner, which he interprets as their not being equal to the Spirit’s demands. Joseph Palmer, who has done, and is doing our farmwork for love, still remains in the same relation as he ever did. Palmer says that having once declared this land free we should never go back, at least until the work has been fairly tested. Under all this it should be stated that Mrs. Alcott has no spontaneous inclination towards a larger family than her own natural one, of spiritual ties she knows nothing, though to keep all together she does and would go through a good deal of exterior and interior toil. I hoped I had done with pecuniary affairs, but it seems I am not to be let off. The crops, I believe, will not discharge all the obligations they were expected to liquidate, and against going further into debt I am most determinately settled.... You will perceive that I have, like yourself, a small peck of troubles; not quite heavy enough to drive me to a juncture with our friends, the Shakers, but sufficiently so to put the thought into one’s head, as you perceive. In the midst of all these events and of William’s illness, who is in bed eight or ten days with a sort of bilious fever, I am not without the consolatory hope that some measure of Spirit utilitary is bound up with our obscure doings. Yours most affectionately, CHARLES LANE. At a late visit on foot to Roxbury, I found the numbers at Brook Farm considerably diminished. I don’t know what they will say to my letter if they see it in _The New Age_, but never mind. * * * * * From now on clashing of wills disturbed the serenity of Fruitlands. Charles Lane, despondent over the course of events and the sense of failure, and seeing further financial complications in store for him, began seriously to consider the plan of life adopted by the Shakers whose well-filled corn-bins and full-rigged haylofts bespoke a system which provided plenty for man and beast, and gave time for alternate work and meditation. He began to talk of this to Mr. Alcott and urged him toward a more monastic life, and then suggested that they should join them. That he had great influence with Mr. Alcott is evident, and Mrs. Alcott, who fully realized this, grew restless and then alarmed. In writing to Oldham, Lane kept dwelling upon Mrs. Alcott. Once he wrote: “Mrs. Alcott has passed from the ladylike to the industrious order, but she has much inward experience to realize. Her pride is not yet eradicated and her peculiar maternal love blinds her to all else—whom does it not so blind for a season?”[11] Footnote 11: Sanborn’s _Bronson Alcott_.