Brook Farm: Historic and Personal MemoirsCodman, John Thomas
History
Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs
Codman, John Thomas
Brook Farm Phalanx (West Roxbury, Boston, Mass.)
Mr. Ripley's books had gone to swell Rev. Theodore Parker's library.
Were they surrendered without a pang? I will tell you. "Fanny," said
Mr. Ripley, seeing his valued books departing, "I can now understand
how a man would feel if he could attend his own funeral." They have
been placed in the Boston City Library by the death and last testament
of the later proprietor. The flowers I had watered and tended passed
into the hands and greenhouse of the translator of "Consuelo." Those
who owned any private effects or furniture took them away.
The Pilgrim House, never beautiful, and barren in its immediate
surroundings, was entirely deserted. The Hive was my home; and when the
warm sun, looking through the barren grape vine into the dining room
window, melted the light snow of early spring, and awoke the tender
grass into new growth and verdancy, and the remaining poultry warmed
themselves by its rays, nestling together by the doorways, as the
melting snow dripped drop by drop from the house top--the farm looked
beautiful still.
In some of our young hearts, with the coming of early summer, awoke a
yearning for one more meeting at the old place; and so we gathered the
young people from far and near for one more good time, for one more
communion. With what pleasure I recall those few hours. How happy we
were! How social and loving and dear we were to one another! In the
many years passed since then, there is no red-letter day like that one.
We were about twenty in number. There were fourteen of us between the
ages of fifteen and twenty-one years. The remainder were older. We
filled a table in the reading room. Little we cared if we sat crowded
close together, for we chose our mates. Some were pupils of the school,
the rest were youths of the Association.
In the afternoon we wandered once more in the beautiful pine woods. We
sang once more the "Silver Moon" together as we roved about, or sat on
the big boulder on the knoll at the foot of the lightning-struck tree.
We recounted old times and seasons; we cracked our merry jokes and ate
our simple treat, and then parted. In a few days the wide world was
between us, and forever. Some went East, and some West, one to
Port-au-Prince, and others to different villages and towns in New
England. Of the number, four remained in Boston; I was one of them.
Reader, my reminiscences are told, but not all told! They are like the
sultan's story that was to last a thousand years. To all but the one
interested there was an unending sameness in it, but to that one, it
was his life.
It is natural to wish to know of the writer what became of the persons
who formed this little band of devotees. I can but give a meagre sketch
in reply, for want of room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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