Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/197

Rh Brook Farm, the social culture was of the richest. Those who ever lived there usually account it to this day as the happiest period of their lives. Even the shy Hawthorne does some justice to this aspect of the society, and there is no reason why any one should object to his making Margaret Fuller a leading figure in its short-lived circle, except the fact — justly trivial to a romancer — that she was not there.

She doubtless, like Emerson, joined occasionally in its merry-makings. In his “American Note-Books,” Hawthorne once describes them as appearing together at a festival. But to her, from the beginning, it was simply an experiment which had enlisted some of her dearest friends; and, later, she found at Brook Farm a sort of cloister for occasional withdrawal from her classes and her conversations. This was all; she was not a stockholder, nor a member, nor an advocate of the enterprise; and even “Miss Fuller’s cow” which Hawthorne tried so hard to milk was a being as wholly imaginary as Zenobia; although old Brook-Farmers report that Mr. Ripley was fond of naming his cattle after his friends, and may, very likely, have found among them a Margaret Fuller.

Her general attitude toward the associative movement, at the outset, may be seen in these sentences, written to the Rev. W. H. Channing, after a public meeting of the faithful: —