THE SCHOOL
Education at Brook Farm began in the kindergarten—only we did not know
it. The word was not in the dictionaries of that period, and Froebel
was yet to be heard of in Massachusetts; but the rudiments of the
kindergarten system were devised and put in practice by our folk in
response to a new demand. The little ones, too old for the nursery and
too young for the school, demanded some adequate provision for their
care while their mothers were at work. In the community the one person
best suited to fill any requirement was directed to the undertaking by
natural selection. This was one of the normal though scarcely
recognized results of the organization of industry Among the many
workers there was always one who could do whatever was to be done
better than any of the others, and to this one, young or old, man or
woman, full charge of the work was given.
The one person best qualified to take charge of these toddlers was a
charming young lady, Miss Abby Morton, whose sincere interest in
children invariably gained their young affections. Miss Morton gathered
her group of older babies on the grass or under the elms whenever
weather permitted and at other times in the parlor of Pilgrim Hall. Her
first object was to make them happy and contented, and to this end she
invented and, arranged games and songs and stories, contrived little
incidents and managed little surprises with never failing ingenuity.
Learning as well as teaching, she gradually gave a purposeful bent to
her song-and-dance diversions, making them effective lessons as well as
pleasant pastimes. Health and strength for the growing babies were
promoted by proper exercises, a good carriage and graceful movement of
little arms and legs being duly considered. Polite manners, and the
correct use of language were taught by precept and example. More than
all, the juvenile minds were, directly and indirectly, drilled to
acquire the habit of paying attention.
[Illustration: A Pioneer Kindergarten]
The power of paying attention, of concentrating the whole force of the
mind on one object, is a native gift. Those who are endowed with this
gift are the men and women destined for high careers. They command
confidence. They are leaders in great undertakings. Success attends
them, humanly speaking, with certainty. There is, also, the faculty of
taking notice, of becoming consciously aware of the impressions
received by the senses. This faculty man shares with the animals below
him in the scale of being, and, in both man and brute, it is
susceptible to cultivation. Training the faculty of observation
develops the habit of paying attention, and this habit, though less
efficient than the inborn gift, may be so confirmed as to become second
nature.
Whatever the community accomplished or failed to accomplish, the Brook
Farm School rendered important service in educational progress by
demonstrating the practicability of cultivating the habit of attention.
The teachers in all classes and in all lessons throughout the school
made ceaseless efforts to win and hold attention. This was not
incidental or accidental, but was an integrate part of the educational
plan, intelligently designed and deliberately pursued, with intent to
train the pupils in the practice of concentrating their minds on the
one thing before them until it became a fixed habit.
Years after the Brook Farm School had closed its doors, I was called to
enter another school—the awful school of war. The first word I had to
learn in that school was the command, “Attention!”
Attention means life or death to the soldier; victory or defeat to the
army. In civil life it aids incalculably in promoting prosperity, the
ability to give instant attention to matters coming up for
consideration being one of the first qualifications of the successful
business man. And if he has not such ability originally it may be
imparted to him as a habit, by early training. Miss Morton did not
begin too early; and the teachers who followed her did not persist too
earnestly in the endeavor to impress this habit deeply on the minds of
their pupils.
When my own children were beginning to be interested in juvenile
literature, they found great pleasure in reading again and again “The
William Henry Letters” and other stories by Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz. On
making inquiry I was much gratified to learn that Mrs. Diaz was our
Abby Morton of the Brook Farm Kindergarten. It was no wonder she could
write letters and stories appealing to children. Her understanding and
her sympathies brought her in close touch with them. She knew their
minds and their hearts, their likes and their dislikes and what she
wrote of them and for them they accepted, knowing that every word was
true to nature. It is observable too, that in her writings she still
holds to the purpose of illustrating to her young readers the necessity
of early acquiring the habit of paying attention.
Brook Farm was practically an industrial school, though not so named.
It was the first I ever heard of where instruction in the useful arts
was regularly given as a part of the educational course. The fine arts
were not very extensively taught at the time, and all we had was
literature, drawing, music, and dancing. These four studies were very
well supplied with good teachers, everything the school promised to do
being well done, but they were not given nearly so much time as the
industrial arts. Every pupil old enough to work was expected to give
two hours every Monday and Tuesday, and every Thursday and Friday to
work under an instructor in the shops on the farm, in the garden or the
household. The pupils could select their own work and could make a
change of occupation with consent of the instructor. No one was obliged
to take the Industrial course, but very few declined, even the
aristocratic Spaniards taking hold of work like good fellows as they
were. Idling was not in fashion.
I worked, for a while, four hours every day in the week. Cedar was
found competent to act as first assistant to the president—in the
cow-stable. Care of the cow being regarded as a disagreeable duty, Dr.
Ripley took it upon himself, just as Mrs. Ripley took the scrubbing of
the kitchen floor. Mrs. Ripley had other little matters to look after,
general oversight of the girls, teaching Greek, entertaining
distinguished guests, writing clever musical plays for the Festal
Series, etc., but she kept the floor clean all the same.
In my honorable office I succeeded Nathaniel Hawthorne. The president
and Cedar arose at 5 A. M., fed and milked 18 or 20 cows, and cleared
up the stable. We bathed, dressed and breakfasted at 8 A. M. At 9 A. M.
Dr. Ripley was in his office and I in the school room. In the evening
two hours more were given to the cows. I liked the work, liked the
cows, and especially liked to be with Dr. Ripley. His flattering report
that Cedar could milk like a streak secured for me the maximum wage,
ten cents an hour, so that, at twelve years of age or thereabouts I was
earning nearly enough to pay the cost of board and lodging.
The milkers were necessarily late at breakfast and supper and these
meals we took with the waiters, the pleasantest company in the dining
room. Dr. and Mrs. Ripley were charming table companions and the bright
girls were merry as happy children. Perhaps Cedar did not fill
Hawthorne’s place quite so well at table as in the stable, but there
were no intimations given to that effect. Making the most of the
present moment was in order. Looking backward was not.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the first members to join the community
and was one of the first to leave it. He thought he could do better
than to spend his time and energy in digging over a manure-pile with a
dung fork. Do better he certainly did, for himself and for the world.
[Illustration: Nathaniel Hawthorne]
I have been asked more than once if the illustrious, poetic and
romantic Hawthorne did actually feed the pigs at Brook Farm. My answer
is that I do not know as I was not there during his residency, but I
think he did not, my reason for thinking he did not being that there
were no pigs to feed. The suggestion may have arisen from a passage in
his Notes when he speaks of going out with Rev. John Allen to buy a
litter of pigs. Minot Pratt, our head farmer, had some sort of interest
in a place across the brook, and there may have been a pig-pen there,
but if there was one on our place it was unknown to sharp-eyed
youngsters who knew every rabbit-run in the woods, and every swallow’s
hole in the sand banks. Many of the farmers were vegetarians and most
of them had a Hebraic aversion to pork. That viand was never seen on
the table except with the baked beans always served on Sunday; Mother
Rykeman managing to keep on hand a supply of middlings for the
bean-pot.
Hawthorne cherished kindly memories of Brook Farm and these memories
embodied in the Blithedale Romance show his warm and appreciative
interest in the life of the community. I fail to find anything like the
portrait-painting which others have discovered in the delineations of
Blithedale characters. There are personal traits alluded to suggestive
of Dr. Ripley, of Georgiana Bruce, of Orestes Brownson and others, but
these hints are not definite enough to identify them with the
personages of the book. As to the assumption that Margaret Fuller
served as a model for Zenobia, that seems to me so far fetched as to be
near absurdity.
Hawthorne visited Brook Farm occasionally, and I remember seeing him, a
large, handsome man, walking up and down the Knoll or seated under the
big elm, alone. He had not then attained fame and did not attract
attention as a celebrity.
My industrial education was not confined to the cow-stable. At
different times I worked in the green-house with John Codman, in the
fields and meadows with everybody, and in the orchard and tree-nursery
with Mr. Dana. On one occasion teacher and pupil were sitting on the
ground, budding peach-seedlings, when a stranger approached and
demanded a hearing. Gerrish had brought him out and had directed him to
Vice President Dana as the authority he should consult. “Free speech,
here,“ said the vice-president, without looking up from his work.
Speaking freely, the visitor announced that his mission was to save
souls, and he had a message of warning to deliver to sinners in danger
of eternal punishment. What he wanted was to have the people called
together that he might exhort them as to the terror of the wrath to
come.
“Our people do not need to be called. They come together every evening
without calling.”
“Can I have an opportunity to address them this evening?” asked the
missionary.
“You can,” said Mr. Dana, still busy, “but they have a way of not
listening, sometimes. I’ll tell you what, if you are able and willing
to preach a sound, old-fashioned, blue-blazes, and brimstone sermon,
you will get an audience. I would like to hear a real scorcher, once
more.”
So far from being encouraged the missionary hastily sought Gerrish and
departed on that worthy teamster’s return trip to Boston.
How right was wise old Dogberry in his dictum that reading and writing
come by nature. Nature surely favors some mortals, but to others she is
not so generous. I was one of the others. My sister Althea picked up
reading from the floor of the nursery, littered with our blocks and
picture books. She needed no lesson in Webster’s First Reader, but
Juferouw Van Antwerp had troubles of her own in elucidating to one, at
least, of her little boys, the mysteries of a, b, ab and c, a, t, cat.
Althea could write a fair hand while her slow brother was still
struggling with pot hooks and hangers. She could always spell correctly
without the aid of a Book, while to me the spelling lesson was the
hardest of tasks. Her studies at the Farm were easy and light—mine,
heavy and difficult.
One advantage of the high place of president’s assistant was that it
gave Cedar two free hours when other pupils were doing their industrial
stunts. These hours were devoted to study, and they were surely needed.
Manual training came, perhaps, by nature and in the industrial course I
progressed rapidly, but for the rest Miss Ripley was justified in her
remark that Cedar was not a “smart” scholar. However, steady Dutch
persistence compensated somewhat for lack of alert facility, and the
dull boy’s lessons were fairly well learned, though at the cost of
patient toil. In these out-of-school labors I was constantly assisted
by kindly teachers. More than willing to aid a pupil trying to get on,
these helpful instructors gave me many an hour during the four years I
was with them, taking time from their own precious leisure to assist a
scholar who could not be “smart” but who could be grateful, as he
always has been.
The class rooms were in the Cottage, Pilgrim Hall and Dr. Ripley’s
library. We were allowed five minutes to go from one class to another
but that was all. The day was not long enough for all we wanted to do,
and to be sharp on time was an absolute necessity; in the classes, at
meals, at work, at play, everywhere and always punctuality was required
by rule and enforced by the pressure of circumstances. There was no
hurry-skurry to disturb the even tenor of the way but there was not a
moment lost, and, while every movement was rapid, there were no false
starts made. Undivided attention was given to the matter in hand at the
moment and when that was disposed of, instantly the next thing in order
was taken up in the same efficient fashion, as if it were the shutting
of one book and the opening of another.
School work was done as far as practicable, out of doors. Teachers and
pupils, like everyone else at Brook Farm, loved to be in the open. We
lived in the free air so habitually that to be shut up in the house was
an irksome restraint. All summer long classes were held in the
amphitheater, under the elms, on the rocky or the grassy slopes of the
Knoll. Of course there were many lessons that could be given only in
class rooms, but recitations, examinations and mental exercises
generally were relegated to regions beyond the threshold. Botany,
geology, natural history and what was then called natural philosophy
were taught among the rocks, in the woods and in the fields with
illustrations from nature.
In the winter the school had to be housed, but except in stormy weather
we managed to see a good deal of the sky. Study of the stars with the
whole population of the place standing around in the snow while Dr.
Ripley discoursed on the constellations—that was indeed an outdoor
lesson worth remembering. Such a lesson might involve exposure to cold,
but we were hardy and no one was harmed either at the moment or
afterward by a little touch of temperature down toward the frost line.
Trees and plants were studied in the woods and fields. The botany class
made excursions, gathering specimens of the flora on the Farm and in
the neighborhood, with peripatetic lectures by the way. Instruction in
geology was given on the rocks, hammer in hand. Birds and the animal
life of the locality we became acquainted with at close quarters. They
were tame and friendly, being protected, cared for and never disturbed,
and we learned their ways habits and characteristics by intimate
association. Kindness to animals was taught and practiced first, last
and all the time, and every living creature from the ox at the plow to
the swallow building in the sandbank was gentle and not afraid.
The only cruel thing we ever did was to cut down through the middle of
an ant’s nest in the pine woods. Our Natural History Club, of which
both old folk and young folk were members, made quite a thorough study
of ants, at one time, and, for the purpose of illustrating a lesson,
John Cheever drove a spade through the center of a nest and shoveled
away, one half of it. There were several of these nests in the pines,
each consisting of a pile of sand about two feet high and perhaps a
yard across at the base, and the structure we examined was filled with
chambers and galleries which we found were also extended a foot or so
under ground. The destruction of the ant hill was regretted by some of
the more scrupulous students, but the exhibit gave us more real
knowledge of the industries, the habits of life, the architecture, the
skill and the intelligence of the Formicidae, than we gained in any
other way. We were immensely interested in these ant studies, and
bought all the books about them we could find. Afterward I made a
little book myself, giving the results of our investigations set forth
in papers read at meetings of the Club, notes of experiments, and of
Mr. Hosmer’s lectures or rather talks on the wonderful works of the
Formicidae. The publication of this book marked my first appearance in
the literary world.
Charles Hosmer was a born naturalist. Every form of life was of
surpassing interest to him. In our walks abroad he saw everything there
was to be seen. His observation was not only alert but was minute and
accurate. He seemed to know every plant and insect and bird and animal
on the Farm, and had something worth while to tell us about anything
and everything that attracted attention.
Instruction was not confined to the studies of the classes. Except in
the hours when pupils were left to their own devices, there was always
a teacher or a guardian at hand giving intelligent direction to
whatever was going on, maintaining discipline in the fundamental
requirement of paying strict attention, and imparting information
respecting the subject in hand.
By way of illustration it may be noted that Minot Pratt was the head
farmer during the early days and a good farmer he proved to be. He not
only worked wonders with the poor soil of the place but managed at the
same time to give a deal of thought and care to his industrial classes.
The boys and girls who elected to work in the fields and gardens with
Minot Pratt received many a valuable lesson in botany, agricultural
chemistry, and the planting, cultivating and harvesting of crops.
Mr. Pratt and his family left Brook Farm when the association was
reorganized as a Fourierite Phalanx, and was succeeded by John Codman,
who, under the new order, was made Chief of the Agricultural Series, a
post which he filled with signal ability during the remaining years of
the community’s existence. The Codmans were important members of the
Phalanx taking responsible places in the management of affairs, and
fully demonstrating the practicability of abiding by Christian
principles in every day life. They were the last to leave the place,
remaining to assume the sad task of winding up the details of final
settlements.
At one time I worked in the flower garden and the conservatory with one
of the Codman boys whom I called Baas, as he was my elder and my
superior in the business of raising plants, shrubs and flowers for
market. The economic worth of kindness to animals is shown by our daily
use of a prize bull as a draught animal to draw the cart in hauling
manure, to drag the cultivator in the garden and similar tasks. He was
a magnificent creature, a gift from Francis George Shaw and was, at
most seasons so gentle and docile that the Baas used to ride on his
back between the barn and the garden.
Wednesdays and Saturdays were half-holidays not only for the school but
for the entire community. On Wednesday and Saturday afternoon the whole
place was en-fete. Work was suspended except the simple household
duties and the care of the animals, and the hours were devoted to
having a good time. The pupils were allowed to do as they pleased, and
it pleased us boys sometimes to be robbers and brigands and smugglers
in a cavern behind the Eyrie. Here we could build a fire on condition
that no fire was ever to be built elsewhere. This dark and dismal cave
occupied a conspicuous place in my memories of Brook Farm for many
years until in later life, I took my daughter to visit the old place,
when puffed up pride had a bad fall. When we came to the cave, I could
hardly believe my own eyes. That spacious den of thieves, that resort
of bold outlaws was a cleft between two great boulders. One could crawl
into it and turn around and that was about all, It surely must have
shrunk or filled up or contracted or something, such a poor little
quart-pot of a cavern it proved to be.
There was another boulder which, on the same occasion, served me a
better turn, enabling me to identify the site where Pilgrim Hall had
stood. This one of the many big rocks scattered about the place was
located immediately in front of Pilgrim Hall, and I recognized it by a
certain little pouch or pocket next the ground on its southerly side; a
circumstance I had cause to remember as it cost me money. The pupils of
the school were allowed a trifle of money, weekly, which we could spend
in any way we liked. Occasionally we went over to the street and bought
oranges or plantains—bananas—rarely sweets, as the sticks of candy,
striped like a barber’s pole in a glass jar on the end of the store
counter were not very tempting. Often we chipped in our pennies, boys
and girls together, and commissioned Gerrish to purchase some book we
wanted or perhaps some bit of finery for festal decoration.
There was one boy who did not take part in our financial ventures. What
he did with his money we did not know, but we never saw a cent of it.
He was ready enough to share our goodies but carefully kept his cash in
his own hands. One day when we were playing three-old-cat in front of
Pilgrim Hall, we lost the ball and searched for it in vain. Steediwink,
as one of the older boys was familiarly called, in groping around the
foot of the boulder above referred to, found a hole in the rock into
which he thrust his hand. At the far end of the hole was a sort of
shelf and thereon was piled a hoard of small change. If everyone knew
whose treasury we had opened, no one named any names, and the find was
forthwith confiscated for the benefit of the festival fund.
Some days later, Mr. Hosmer in his evening talk to the children very
significantly stated that one of the scholars had lost a sum of money
and asked us to try and find it and bring it to him that he might
restore it to the rightful owner. It took all our allowances for
several weeks to make up the needed amount, but finally the lost cash
was found, and Mr. Hosmer thanked us, again very significantly, for
aiding him in squaring up a somewhat grievous account. The miserly boy
was of course to be commended for thrift, but he was not of our kind
and did not remain long in our company. He took care of his pence and
his pounds took care of themselves, no doubt in later life, but that is
only surmise as he was one of the few that we others did not try to
keep track of after Brook Farm became a thing of the past.