Our entertainments, too, were in these happy days almost exclusively free from the limitations of four walls and a ceiling. Rambles in the woods and fields, excursions to Chestnut Hill or Cow Island, rowing parties on Charles River, ball-games, athletic contests, swimming matches, everything the Greeks ever did and more than they ever thought of. Even our meals conveniently simple as they were, frequently took the form of impromptu picnics on the Knoll. The center of summer festivities was a natural amphitheater in the beautiful pine-woods. Here was a little hollow, clear of trees which served admirably well as an auditorium, and a bank at one end, leveled down with very little artifice, made a spacious stage, or, if required, a suitable rostrum. Here we had plays worth seeing and concerts worth hearing. Here, too, Sunday services were sometimes held, to the scandalizing of our Puritan neighbors, though when Dr. Channing preached a saintly sermon and Mr. Dwight’s quartet rendered the Gregorian chants, the service was an appropriate and impressive expression of sincere religious sentiment. Some of our Puritan neighbors called us heretics because we did not believe in infant damnation or some equally profitable and comforting doctrine of the orthodox faith, and, furthermore, we actually sang hymns in Latin. All that was very bad to be sure, but then we kept the commandments, eleven of them, ten in the old testament and one in the new, and we dealt fairly with all men. We went to church too, either having Sunday services at home or attending Theodore Parker’s church in Brookline. However, both Theodore Parker and Dr. Ripley were Unitarians, so that did not help us very much in the opinion of our critics. It may almost be said that Brook Farm was as much an outgrowth of Unitarianism as of Transcendentalism. Nearly all the first members were Unitarians and many of the later comers were of the same faith. The congregation of the Unitarian church at Brookline usually contained a considerable percentage of Brook Farmers, and at times a Unitarian minister from the Farm officiated in that sacred edifice. Rev. Dr. Ripley, Rev. John S. Dwight, Rev. George P. Bradford, Rev. Warren Burton, Rev. John Allen and Rev. Ephraim Chapin were resident ministers, and Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rev. William H. Channing and Rev. James Freeman Clarke were warmly interested in the Association. Charles K. Newcomb and Christopher P. Cranch also immediate friends, were educated for the Unitarian ministry. Dr. Codman in his “Recollections” speaks of seeing five Unitarian clergymen dancing in the pine-grove at once.