Because
Brook Farm seemed to adopt this principle, he went there. Some of the
meetings of the associators were held at Miss E. P. Peabody's, in
Boston, and the proceedings were related to him. Mr. Ripley did not at
first know who was the "distinguished literary gentleman" announced as
willing to join the company; and when told that it was Hawthorne, he
felt as if a miracle had befallen, or "as if," he tells me, "the heavens
would presently be filled with angels, and we should see Jacob's ladder
before us. But we never came any nearer to having _that_, than our
old ladder in the barn, from floor to hayloft." For his personal
benefit, Hawthorne had two ends in view, connected with Brook Farm: one,
to find a suitable and economical home after marriage; the other, to
secure a mode of life thoroughly balanced and healthy, which should
successfully distribute the sum of his life's labor between body and
brain. He hoped to secure leisure for writing by perhaps six hours of
daily service; but he found nearly sixteen needful. "He worked like a
dragon," says Mr. Ripley.
The productive industry of the association was agriculture; the leading
aim, teaching; and in some cases there were classes made up of men,
women, children, whom ignorance put on the same plane. Several buildings
accommodated the members: the largest, in which the public table was
spread and the cooking done, being called The Hive; another, The Pilgrim
House; a smaller one, The Nest; and still another was known as The
Cottage.
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