When Mr. Ripley left Brook Farm he was poor. The experiment had cost him money, years of toil and made debts for which he felt responsible. He determined to pay them. As yet the way was not open. The _Harbinger_ was changed in form and lived less than two years in its new location, and during a temporary illness of the editor its publication was suspended. Mr. Ripley and wife taught school at Flatbush, L.I. At the termination of the _Harbinger_ he immediately commenced writing for the New York _Tribune_. Its pay roll indicates what he received May 5, 1849; it was $5 for the previous week's work. In July, same year, he was paid $10 per week; April 6, 1850, $15; Sept. 21, 1851, $25 per week. He wrote articles on all the living topics of the day, from the arrival of the last new singer to the death of the last criminal. Things trivial and non-important, grave and gay, of lasting import and the most ephemeral, all came under his pen. He also wrote, either occasionally or regularly, for a dozen other periodicals. He was an early contributor to _Putnam's_ and from its commencement wrote for _Harper's New Monthly_. As editor associated with Mr. C.A. Dana he gave his time and best thought to the New American Cyclopedia, and the first two or three volumes of the series were edited solely by them. In 1871 his salary was raised to $75 per week. When the Cyclopedia was revised he was paid $250 per month for extra work on it. More than a million four hundred and sixty thousand volumes of the two editions have been sold, and a small royalty secured to the editors on each volume. With prosperity Mr. Ripley never forgot his obligations. The old score of debt was wiped out and paid. He was free, and as a man of letters revelled in that which had been his youthful ideal. When a student at Harvard College he wrote to his father, "I know that my peculiar habits of mind, imperfect as they are, strongly impel me to the path of intellectual effort; and if I am to be at any time of use to society or a satisfaction to myself or my friends, it will be in the way of some retired literary situation where a fondness for books will be more requisite than the busy, calculating mind of a man in the business part of the community." Thus was one of his youthful dreams fulfilled. His capacity for work seemed unbounded. "He gave all his time and all his energy to literary criticism, and spending on it, too, the full resources of a richly furnished mind and infusing into it the spirit of a broad and noble training."