Mr. Ripley wrote of it a few months after its commencement: "We are now in full operation as a family of workers, teachers and students. We feel the deepest convictions that, for us, our mode of life is the true one, and no attraction would tempt any one of us to exchange it for that we have quitted lately." And it would be an impertinence now to penetrate into its private circles and bring its members and doings to the gaze of an investigating and curious public, were it not that its doings and its members have become, from their relation to social science, a part of public history. The pressure of life was off at Brook Farm, for the nonce. What anyone did that was out of the common, might cause smiles and laughter but no frowns or scoldings. Each felt and believed in the demonstration of his or her own individuality, and, as a first consequence, there was something that was often mistaken, by strangers, for rudeness and want of order. Some forgot that it was especially work they came for, and were anxious to have their theories discussed. Independence in dress was universal. The Mrs. Grandys were all away, and if the young ladies thought it was prettier to exhibit the grace of flowing tresses than to bind them up in "pugs" behind their heads, who should, who could, object? Prim Margaret Fuller, who was a visitor--and never a member of the community as has often been stated--professed herself disturbed, at first, by the easy and perhaps indifferent manner in which they listened to her long conversations, as they sat on the floor or on crickets; but on a later visit, she expressed herself as better pleased. Doubtless some of the individual angularities had been rubbed off, by this time, by the pleasant but close contact of the Community life--and some of hers as well. CHAPTER II. THE SECOND DEVELOPMENT. Two years of the experimental and "idyllic" life, ran rapidly away, and the Community had gained something of position and name in the outward world. Personal contact had modified the extreme views of many of the founders. Changes had taken place in the Individuals composing it; some had departed. Six of the original stockholders remained. The number had increased to about seventy, including some thirty who were pupils. The financial success had not been all that was desired. Everything else was getting more settled. The social life was charming. Improvements in material matters, in comforts, in discipline and in grace of manners were visible. But what was to be developed next among all the things desirable? Was it to push the school still further in progress, to attach mechanical industries to the organization, to work up the farm life into more prominence, or what?