But
to own the truth, I very soon became sensible that, _as regarded
society at large, we stood in a position of new hostility rather than
new brotherhood._" And, in fact, the real good which Mr. Ripley's
attempt did, was to implant the co-operative idea in the minds of men
who have gone out into the world to effect its gradual application on a
grander scale. It is by introducing it into one branch of social energy
after another that the regenerative agency of to-day can alone be made
effectual. The leaders of that community have been broad-minded, and
recognize this truth. None of them, however, have ever taken the trouble
to formulate it as Hawthorne did, on perceiving it some years in
advance.
The jocose tone, it maybe added, seems to have been a characteristic
part of the Brook Farm experiment, despite the sober earnest and rapt
enthusiasm that accompanied it. The members had their laughing
allusions, and talked--in a strain of self-ridicule precisely similar
to Coverdale's--of having bands of music to play for the
field-laborers, who should plough in tune. This merely proves that they
were people who kept their wits whole, and had the humor that comes with
refinement; while it illustrates by the way the naturalness of the tone
Hawthorne has given to Coverdale.
The Priscilla of Blithedale was evidently founded upon the little
seamstress whom he describes in the Note-Books as coming out to the
farm, and Old Moodie's spectre can be discerned in a brief memorandum of
a man seen (at Parker's old bar-room in Court Square) in 1850.
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