第7章 A KNOT OF DREAMERS(3)

And, first of all, we had divorced ourselves from pride, and were striving to supply its place with familiar love.We meant to lessen the laboring man's great burden of toil, by performing our due share of it at the cost of our own thews and sinews.We sought our profit by mutual aid, instead of wresting it by the strong hand from an enemy, or filching it craftily from those less shrewd than ourselves (if, indeed, there were any such in New England), or winning it by selfish competition with a neighbor; in one or another of which fashions every son of woman both perpetrates and suffers his share of the common evil, whether he chooses it or no.And, as the basis of our institution, we purposed to offer up the earnest toil of our bodies, as a prayer no less than an effort for the advancement of our race.

Therefore, if we built splendid castles (phalansteries perhaps they might be more fitly called), and pictured beautiful scenes, among the fervid coals of the hearth around which we were clustering, and if all went to rack with the crumbling embers and have never since arisen out of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame.In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world's improvability than it deserved.It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime;or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error.

Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our conversation; but when he did speak, it was very much to some practical purpose.For instance:--"Which man among you," quoth he, "is the best judge of swine? Some of us must go to the next Brighton fair, and buy half a dozen pigs."Pigs! Good heavens! had we come out from among the swinish multitude for this? And again, in reference to some discussion about raising early vegetables for the market:--"We shall never make any hand at market gardening," said Silas Foster, "unless the women folks will undertake to do all the weeding.We haven't team enough for that and the regular farm-work, reckoning three of your city folks as worth one common field-hand.No, no; I tell you, we should have to get up a little too early in the morning, to compete with the market gardeners round Boston."It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first questions raised, after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world, should relate to the possibility of getting the advantage over the outside barbarians in their own field of labor.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.Nor could this fail to be the case, in some degree, until the bigger and better half of society should range itself on our side.Constituting so pitiful a minority as now, we were inevitably estranged from the rest of mankind in pretty fair proportion with the strictness of our mutual bond among ourselves.

This dawning idea, however, was driven back into my inner consciousness by the entrance of Zenobia.She came with the welcome intelligence that supper was on the table.Looking at herself in the glass, and perceiving that her one magnificent flower had grown rather languid (probably by being exposed to the fervency of the kitchen fire), she flung it on the floor, as unconcernedly as a village girl would throw away a faded violet.

The action seemed proper to her character, although, methought, it would still more have befitted the bounteous nature of this beautiful woman to scatter fresh flowers from her hand, and to revive faded ones by her touch.Nevertheless, it was a singular but irresistible effect; the presence of Zenobia caused our heroic enterprise to show like an illusion, a masquerade, a pastoral, a counterfeit Arcadia, in which we grown-up men and women were making a play-day of the years that were given us to live in.I tried to analyze this impression, but not with much success.

"It really vexes me," observed Zenobia, as we left the room, "that Mr.

Hollingsworth should be such a laggard.I should not have thought him at all the sort of person to be turned back by a puff of contrary wind, or a few snowflakes drifting into his face.""Do you know Hollingsworth personally?" I inquired.

"No; only as an auditor--auditress, I mean--of some of his lectures,"said she."What a voice he has! and what a man he is! Yet not so much an intellectual man, I should say, as a great heart; at least, he moved me more deeply than I think myself capable of being moved, except by the stroke of a true, strong heart against my own.It is a sad pity that he should have devoted his glorious powers to such a grimy, unbeautiful, and positively hopeless object as this reformation of criminals, about which he makes himself and his wretchedly small audiences so very miserable.

To tell you a secret, I never could tolerate a philanthropist before.

Could you?"

"By no means," I answered; "neither can I now.""They are, indeed, an odiously disagreeable set of mortals," continued Zenobia."I should like Mr.Hollingsworth a great deal better if the philanthropy had been left out.At all events, as a mere matter of taste, I wish he would let the bad people alone, and try to benefit those who are not already past his help.Do you suppose he will be content to spend his life, or even a few months of it, among tolerably virtuous and comfortable individuals like ourselves?""Upon my word, I doubt it," said I."If we wish to keep him with us, we must systematically commit at least one crime apiece! Mere peccadillos will not satisfy him."Zenobia turned, sidelong, a strange kind of a glance upon me; but, before I could make out what it meant, we had entered the kitchen, where, in accordance with the rustic simplicity of our new life, the supper-table was spread.