"April 13. I have not yet taken my first lesson in agriculture, except that I went to see our cows foddered, yesterday afternoon. We have eight of our own; and the number is now increased by a transcendental heifer belonging to Miss Margaret Fuller. She is very fractious, I believe, and apt to kick over the milk pail.... April 16. I have milked a cow!!! ... May 3. The whole fraternity eat together, and such a delectable way of life has never been seen on earth since the days of the early Christians.... May 4.... there is nothing so unseemly and disagreeable in this sort of toil as you could think. It defiles the hands, indeed, but not the soul." Unfortunately, in order to earn a living, it was found necessary to work ten hours a day in the summer time, and this toil was so fatiguing that the mind could not work clearly at the end of the day. We find Hawthorne writing on June 1 of the same year:-- "It is my opinion that a man's soul may be buried and perish ... in a furrow of the field, just as well as under a pile of money." On August 12, he asks:-- "Is it a praiseworthy matter that I have spent five golden months in providing food for cows and horses? It is not so." On October 9, he says:-- "Our household, being composed in great measure of children and young people, is generally a cheerful one enough, even in gloomy weather.... It would be difficult to conceive beforehand how much can be added to the enjoyment of a household by mere sunniness of temper and liveliness of disposition...." Hawthorne remained at Brook Farm for only one of the six years of its existence. An important building, on which there was no insurance, burned in 1846, and the next year the association was forced for financial reasons to disband. This was probably the most ideal of a series of social settlements, every one of which failed. The problem of securing sufficient leisure to live in all the faculties of the soul has not yet been solved, but attempts toward a satisfactory solution have not yet been abandoned. The influence of Brook Farm on our literature survives in Hawthorne's _Blithedale Romance_ (p. 219), in his _American Note Books_, in Emerson's miscellaneous writings, and in many books and hundreds of articles by less well-known people. Almost all of those who participated in this social experiment spoke of it in after years with strong affection. IDEALS OF THE NEW ENGLAND AUTHORS.--When we examine with closest scrutiny the lives of the chief New England authors, of Emerson and Thoreau, Longfellow and Whittier, Holmes and Lowell, we find that all were men of the highest ideals and character. Not one could be accused of double dealing and intentional misrepresentation, like Alexander Pope; not one was intemperate, like Robert Burns or Edgar Allan Poe; not one was dissolute, like Byron; not one uttered anything base, like many a modern novelist and dramatist.