X. IN AFTER YEARS

More than thirty years after the Fruitlands failure, Mrs. Caroline Sherman, of Chicago, heard from Mr. Alcott its story as he came to view it in later years. She says:—

“One day at Concord Mr. Alcott consented to give his experience at Fruitlands, and for two hours he entertained the little company with the happiest of humor, as he told the story of his effort to realize an ideal community. Together with Charles Lane, he purchased a location on the north side of a sandy hill in Harvard, and started out with the idea of welcoming hospitably to their community any human being who sought admission. Mr. Alcott described the various sorts of quaint characters who came to live with them, lured by the charms of Utopia and Arcadia combined. Only a vegetable diet was allowed; for the rights of animals to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness formed a fundamental principle in their constitution. This not only cut them off from beef, but from milk and eggs. The milk belonged to the calf, and the chicken had a right to its existence as well as the infant. Even the canker-worms that infested the apple trees were not to be molested. They had as much right to the apples as man had. Unfortunately farm operations were not started until well into June, and the only crop raised that was of value as dependence was barley; but the philosophers did not flinch at the thought of an exclusively barley diet. Now and then they gave a thought as to what they should do for shoes when those they now had were gone; for depriving the cow of her skin was a crime not to be tolerated. The barley crop was injured in harvesting, and before long actual want was staring them in the face. This burden fell heaviest upon Mrs. Alcott, for, as housewife, it was her duty to prepare three meals a day. They remained at Fruitlands till mid-winter in dire poverty, all the guests having taken their departure as provisions vanished. Friends came to the rescue, and, concluded Mr. Alcott, with a tone of pathos in his voice: ‘We put our four little women on an ox-sled,† and made our way to Concord. So faded one of the dreams of my youth. I have given you the facts as they were; Louisa has given the comic side in “Transcendental Wild Oats”; but Mrs. Alcott could give you the tragic side.’”

†As a matter of fact they did not go to Concord on the ox-sled, but to Still River, where they lived for a year in the house called the “Brick Ends,” belonging to the Lovejoy family. They then moved to Concord where Orchard House now stands as a memorial to the later years.