Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/59

36 the great copper-mines, the wonders of that inland sea; we saw Mackinac, most romantic of islands; we went to Dubuque, and already it had begun to grow. I have never seen the Mississippi since, nor Mackinac, nor the great lakes, excepting to glance across the one at St. Louis and New Orleans and to feel the breezes of Lake Michigan at Chicago; but I pay my parting tribute to the old steamboat way of crossing them. It was transcendent. I should like to make those journeys again.

In one of my visits to Boston, it may have been in the spring of 1847, I was taken out to see Brook Farm, that experiment of Fourierism which led perhaps to the writing of the Blithedale Romance.

I knew very little of the writings of Fourier, or his romantic economic scheme that men and women Avere so perfect that they could all live together under one common roof, or in phalanxes, dividing the labor, and enjoying in groups of fifty or one hundred one common fire which should cook the common dinner. "Why must a man and a woman be shut up in cages which they call homes, each wasting extravagantly fire and food?" was one of the favorite remarks of the Fourierites.

A few Transcendentalists, with Reverend George Ripley at their head, were making the first experiment out at West Roxbury, in a wooden house, which, as I saw it, was painfully crowded. Mr. William White, a brother-in-law of Mr. Lowell, and his sisters, were so good as to take me there to tea; and although I have forgotten much else, I shall always remember that intellectual group in the long, low, crowded room, one hot evening in July. The lady who received us did so while hastily pulling down her sleeves, explaining that she had been in the "washing group."