John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

This letter must have been preceded by another, which has not been found, from these interesting brothers, for on March 18, 1842, Ripley wrote to Dana, who had evidently gone to New York on business, as follows:

... We have just received an application which we are inclined to think a good deal of from two Transcendental brothers, James Burrill and George William Curtis, natives of Providence, I suppose, but now apparently residents in New York. They are young men, eighteen and twenty, with high ideal aims, and seem to seek our community, as an emblem or an attempt to realize what they yearn for. They wish to board with us, and work some three or four hours daily on such work as city-bred youth can apply themselves to. Their letter is a gem. So, too, I hope are they. I infer from what they say, though not quite distinct, that they want to see how they like us and we shall like them, and then, if all is right, become one, or rather two, of us. It is decided to receive them for three months at three dollars a week, etc. I shall write them to that effect to-morrow or next day. Pray find them out and open to them our Scripture, as you did to Greeley. They ask me to address them care of George Curtis, Bank of Commerce, New York. You can soon see whether they are of us and should be with us.

I am glad you had the talk you did with Mrs. Child; to be sure, we can see no way open just now by which they could join us this month or the next month, or the month after, but I cannot give up the inner faith that all who truly belong with us will find their way here, as surely as the wild duck finds the south in winter, and no want of externals can prevent it. We are in a prosperous state enough now, exteriorly, I fancy; perhaps too much so. I almost dread the effect of being allowed not to struggle with poverty and other hardships: and to meet this danger we must gather in those who are disinterested and magnanimous through and through: those who see and love our idea as we do ourselves, and are willing to live for it, which is no doubt a good deal harder than to die for it, since one is a much longer process than the other.