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of Michigan on January 21, 1895.
The charm of the life, the causes of failure, his own experiences, are all candidly and gracefully told.
Mr. Ripley is mentioned with respect and cordiality.
Where the treasure is there will the heart be also.
Charles Dana, who laughed at much which some men hold dear, never vilipended his own experience at Brook Farm, though it is a matter of conjecture whether he retained faith in any particular reform, social or political.
He took pains in this lecture to deny that there was any communism in the experiment.
Nothing in his nature would have responded to that principle.
The real trouble at Brook Farm to him was evident: “it didn't pay” ; but he insisted that the breaking up was regretted by all who shared the life there.
He severed his own connection soon after the fire, at which he did not chance to be present, and secured work in Boston on the Chronotype at five dollars a week.
But returning to the life at Brook Farm, which had such an important bearing upon the development of
Dana's character, let me quote further from his correspondence with
Dr. Ripley.
This is necessarily occasional because they were separated but seldom.
Both stuck closely to the work they had undertaken.
Dana was, however, occasionally absent on business, and during the trip to New York, already alluded to,
Ripley wrote, April 10, 1842, as follows:
The best news I have heard for some time is that you will be with us next Sunday, for though no one, I suppose, is essential to the life of another, we miss you sadly at every turn, and it hardly seems as if our Brook ran as pleasantly as usual while you are not here.
Since Braddy left us, the boys have had “little Latin and less Greek,” that is to say, none at all of either, except regular doses in the grammar.
We are going on famously in algebra, however; I like to teach it and the boys take hold of it well: to say nothing of a large class-boys and girls, Minot and all, two evenings in the week.
Salisbury
