A BAD BEGINNING
Mr. Jonas Gerrish, or familiarly, just plain Gerrish, was the United
States Mail, the Express, the Freight Line and the rapid transit system
for Brook Farm. He made two trips daily between the Hive and Scollay’s
Square, covering the distance, six miles, in about an hour and a half,
going out of his way to accommodate his patrons, as occasion required.
We found Gerrish waiting at the depot when we arrived in Boston,
half-an-hour late. He was a little impatient, as he said there was snow
coming and he feared delay in getting back to the city. Gerrish was apt
to be impatient, but that was all on the surface as he was really very
kind-hearted and obliging. The snow began to fall before we were beyond
the streets, and we reached our destination in the midst of a driving
storm.
Father decided to return at once with Gerrish, having business in
Boston which might go amiss if he should be storm-stayed in West
Roxbury. His apprehensions were only too well founded, the Brook Farm
community being snowbound in the Hive during the next three days. He
hastily left us in charge of good Mrs. Rykeman, the house-mother at the
Hive, promising to come out on Saturday for the week-end at the
Farm—though I don’t know, come to think of it, that the weekend of our
present day outings was known to us at that period.
Mrs. Rykeman had two forlorn, cold and tired children on her hands, one
of whom at most was a very miserable youngster, indeed, far from mother
and home and everything that makes life worth living. Our hostess took
us to her own room and made us comfortable as she could, and,
presently, as the bell rang for supper, conducted us to the
dining-room. This was a long, bare room, containing ten or twelve
square tables, also bare, save for the napkin, knife and spoon and bowl
at each place. As we entered at one end of the room, a group of girls
came in at the other end bringing pitchers of milk and piles of Boston
brown bread. There was also Graham bread or, as we now call it,
whole-wheat bread, and apple-sauce, but the meal consisted mainly of
brown bread and milk. I then and there learned that the foreign milk
was poor and thin because it was skimmed. The idea of putting skimmed
milk on the table was unknown in the Old Colonie.
[Illustration: “The Hive”]
I could not or would not touch the abominable brown bread, and, while
waiting for the girls to serve the eggs or chops or whatever there was
for supper, passed the time in trying to make out the meaning of the
chatter and laughter that filled the room with merriment. There seemed
to be a gleam of sense discoverable now and then, but, on the whole, it
was impossible to catch the significance of the rapid-fire talk
volleying from table to table. Indeed, it was always difficult for a
stranger to swing into the current of general conversation at Brook
Farm. The bright young enthusiasts there were all of one mind, in a
way; in close sympathy and quick to understand each other. A word, a
look, a gesture expressed a thought. An allusion, a memory, an apt
quotation suggested an idea which was clearly apprehended by ready
listeners; and a flash of wit was instantly followed by a peal of
mirth, echoed to the limit.
It goes without saying that these reflections were not in my young
noddle at the moment, but being of later date, are the findings of
longer observation. I must have been in a sort of maze, wondering at
the fun going on which I could see and hear but could not comprehend,
and wondering too when supper was coming. I was about to ask Mrs.
Rykeman how long we would have to wait, when, whiz! the whole business
of the meal was over and done with. Everybody sprang up at once, and
away they all flew like a flock of birds, leaving an astonished little
boy looking for something to eat.
Althea took flight with the others, presently returning to look after
her forlorn brother, but, finding I had been taken to the kitchen for
something that might at least alleviate the pangs of hunger, she
rejoined the girls in the parlor, where there was already a dance under
way. Althea was a bright-spirited girl, vivacious, alert, appreciative
and companionable. She forthwith took her place in the Brook Farm
community with the best grace. She readily made friends with Abby Ford
and her sister, with Annie and Mary Page, with the Barlow brothers and
with the Spanish students of about her own age. Of these latter, Ramon
Cita or Little Raymond became subsequently her particular cavalier.
Ramon was the youngest and smallest of the Spaniards, besides being the
best looking according to our standards, and a very charming little
gentleman he was, too. There were eight of these boys and young men,
and they were all courteous and polite to a degree that we American
youngsters could admire, but to which we could hardly attain. They must
have been members of distinguished families, as they more than once
received visits from high officials of the Spanish legation in
Washington.
It may as well be said here that these students were sent from Manila
to prepare for Harvard in Dr. Ripley’s school in Boston; a school which
was of the first repute in the early forties. The Doctor transferred it
with several of the teachers to West Roxbury, where it became the
nucleus of the Brook Farm school. The Ford girls, with their aunt, Miss
Russell, the Barlow boys and their mother, and the Manila youths were,
I believe, among those migrating from the Boston school.
We all liked the young Spaniards very much, and I have ever since liked
the people of their nationality I have met at home and abroad. They can
teach us good manners every day in the week; but they have one
peculiarity that must strike the average American as certainly rather
strange. This is their common and familiar use of words and names which
we regard as sacred and hardly to be spoken outside of the
meeting-house. As an example, it may be allowable, at this late day to
mention without giving family names, that one of our students was
baptized Jesus Mary, and another by the same rite was designated Joseph
Holy Spirit.
Before bedtime the snowstorm had risen to the height of a terrific
tempest, the heaviest and hardest of the winter, and what the New
England winter can do when it tries can only be known by experience, as
no description can convey any adequate idea of the fierce blasts, the
drive of hard-frozen snow and the terrible cold forced straight through
clothes and flesh and bones by the piercing spears and pounding hammers
of the Northeast gale fiends. Three days and three nights the raiding
powers of the arctics raged about us and blockaded all but the hardiest
and strongest of us in the close quarters of the Hive. To venture out
of the house was to risk life and limb. No one was allowed to run such
risks alone, as, in case of a fall, the chances would be against
getting up again without help, but parties of twos and threes of the
young men went to the barns to look after the cattle or up to the
Eyrie, the Cottage and Pilgrim Hall to see that all was right and to
bring down a sled-load of bedding for the shut-ins. In their services,
the vegetarians matched themselves against the “cannibals” as they
disdainfully called those who were still in bonds to the flesh-pots of
Egypt, but I do not believe there was beef enough eaten on the place to
warrant any comparisons being made, and, at any rate, they all came out
alike, pretty much exhausted.
Next morning I awoke on a sofa in the upper hall, where I had stretched
out, along toward midnight, for a moment’s rest. Althea had carefully
taken off my shoes, and had covered me over with cloaks and shawls,
without my knowing it. The swarm in the Hive had exemplified the poet’s
idea of the tumultuous privacy of storm fairly well as to the tumult,
but as to the privacy, that was what could be had in a house
overcrowded with excited young folk. Frolic and fun were to the fore,
and everybody bore the troubles of that tempestuous evening with high
good humor; one weary, cross and fretful little chap being left out of
the account. Left out he was, for sure. Always at Brook Farm, anyone
not strictly in it, to use a phrase of later date, was absolutely out
of it. One had to be aboard the train or find himself standing alone on
the platform.
I was in better case after what had to serve as a morning toilet, as
Mrs. Rykeman had promised to make up for a scanty supper by a treat of
good hot brewis. Brewis was a new word and I was more than ready to
test the merits of the unknown aliment, as, in my experience, anything
commended as good to eat, was sure to prove palatable. The dining-room
was occupied as a shake-down dormitory for women and girls, and
breakfast was taken standing in the parlor or hall or anywhere places
could be found outside of the kitchen where work was going on. When my
bowl was handed me it was filled with the everlasting brown bread
boiled in milk. That was brewis. I was just mad!
Wednesday and Thursday of that first week at Brook Farm were sad days
indeed. I made a bad beginning! Shut up indoors by the most violent
tempest of the year, I sulked in corners, alone in a crowd, the
loneliest kind of solitude. The teachers did their best to keep classes
going in the bedrooms, but, in the irregularity of the sessions, I was
allowed to be absent without remark. Althea and some others tried to
draw me into the continuous picnic performance going on all over the
house only to learn there was nothing doing in brother’s retreat. At
meal time the exasperating brown bread was invariably offered for my
delectation, and that I regarded as a personal affront. Resorting to
alliteration’s artful aid, it may be said I seemed bound to be bothered
by Boston brown bread. I brooded morning, noon and night over the one
idea that when my father came, I would beseech him to take me back
home.
It appeared, later, that I was not being altogether neglected by the
authorities during this trying period, as they had kept their eyes on
the new boy and were seriously considering this same idea, thinking it
would perhaps be better to advise his father to take him away. The dour
youker was plainly enough so unhappily out of place that they were
inclined not to try to keep him. Truly, a bad beginning!
This was not a decision adopted to meet the special case in hand, but
rather an unwritten rule of the community. Brook Farm was a solidarity,
a company united to put in practice certain principles and to
accomplish certain results, and only those were wanted who could enter
into the spirit of the movement and aid in carrying on the great work.
Those who did not help, hindered, and to hinder the task of reforming
society could not be permitted. As with the community, so also with the
school. The school was an independent organization, but it was likewise
an experimental organization, being, practically, a first attempt to
inaugurate industrial education, and only pupils suited for such an
education were wanted. It was not a place for the feeble-minded, the
deficient or the intractable, but for bright children capable of
responding to instruction directed to certain ends. The teachers,
earnestly devoted to these selected courses of instruction, could not
afford to give time and attention to incompetents.
These matters are worth mentioning for the reason that Brook Farm in
general and Dr. Ripley in particular have been censured for refusing to
accept members of the community and pupils of the school not suited to
the forwarding of undertakings held as almost sacred. This
exclusiveness was neither hard-hearted nor uncharitable, but was simply
necessary under the circumstances. To charge Brook Farm with being
heathenish and unchristian on this account, as certain Puritan critics
have done, is as unjust as it would be to blame Luther Burbank for
discarding a thousand plants to cultivate the one growth giving promise
of answering his purpose. For any experiment the careful selection of
material is not only proper but indispensable.
On Friday the storm abated and things began to mend all around as the
sides cleared. In the afternoon Dr. Ripley and Charles Hosmer made
their way home from Boston, hailed with rejoicings by everyone except
Master Grumpus, who should have been more than thankful for their
timely arrival, had he only known it. Saturday morning regular lessons
were resumed in the classroom, but I held aloof in out-of-the-way
coverts; one hiding place being the cow-stable. Here Charles Hosmer
happened to find me, just incidentally, as it seemed, but really by
kindly design no doubt, and gave me a hearty greeting which I couldn’t
be so churlish as not to return.
“Are you the boy who came from Albany?” he asked.
“From the Old Colonie, in Albany,” I replied.
“I suppose,” he continued, “you have not yet been assigned to your
classes?”
I accepted this account of what was in fact absence without leave, and
he then suggested that if I had nothing else on hand I might help him
in making a toboggan-slide. Never having heard of such a thing I
accepted the invitation. Securing a couple of shovels we cleared a path
to the knoll; and, on the way, Mr. Hosmer explained that Angus Cameron,
another new pupil, hailing from Canada, had brought to the school a
toboggan, a kind of sled, and we were to make a smooth path or slide
for it, so the boys and girls could try it in the afternoon when there
were no lessons.
We went to work with a will, spanking the snow down with the shovels,
leveling uneven places and forming a clear, hard track from the top of
the Knoll to the brook. On the edge of the bank we piled up an inclined
plane, wetting down the snow and building a mound perhaps five feet
high. From this elevation, Mr. Hosmer stated, the toboggan, flying down
the slide, would shoot upward and forward and land on the far side of
the brook. That seemed to me a very desirable thing to do, and, while I
finished up the shovel-work, my companion went back to the Hive and
brought out the toboggan.
This conveniency, well enough known to-day, was new to us, and we did
not quite know how to manage it. However, we got onto the thing
somehow, and away we went down the slide. The slide was all right and
the inclined plane was all right, so we made the descent and the ascent
all right, soaring over the brook like a bird, but the landing on the
far side was all wrong. We hit the snowbank like a battering ram, the
snow piling up in front of us as hard as stone; the shock was terrific!
Mr. Hosmer got the worst of it as he catapulted into the drift, while I
alighted in a heap on his shoulders. He scrambled out of the drift on
all fours, concerned only with learning whether I was badly hurt. On my
assurance that unless his back and legs and arms were broken, there was
no damage done, he straightened up and declared he was unhurt but
dreadfully humiliated. “How could a man be such a condemned idiot as to
plunge head-first against a barricade like that?” This was the question
suggested to his mind, only he did not say “condemned idiot” exactly,
but he apologized for the emphatic words he did use, and as they do not
look well in print, they need not be repeated.
Despite his bluff I saw he was in pain and wanted him to return to the
Hive, but he insisted on finishing our job. Under his direction I
wallowed through the snowdrift, back and forth, trampling down a
passage, and then pressed the snow hard and flat, using the toboggan
like a plank. Meanwhile Mr. Hosmer bad turned very white and now
dropped onto the toboggan, limp and sick. The shock had upset his
digestion. How to get him home? Borrowing rails from the roadside fence
I laid them across the streak of open water in the middle of the brook,
piled snow over them, and dragged my patient across on the toboggan. I
attempted to haul him up the Knoll, but he protested, asserting that he
was much better and fully able to walk. He managed to crawl up the hill
and left me with directions to find Angus Cameron and join him in
taking charge of the slide in the afternoon.
After making half-a-dozen or more flying leaps over the brook on the
new conveyance, with as many jolts and tumbles in the snow, I managed
to get the hang of the thing, and could steer it over the course with
delightful ease, suggesting the flight of a bird.