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Rh pose of discussing the new theme. Neither Alcott nor Emerson accepted the project in its completeness. During the following month Alcott enumerates these persons as being likely to join the proposed community, — Ripley, Emerson, Parker, S. D. Robbins, and Miss Fuller. But I know no reason to suppose that any of these, except Mr. Ripley himself, had any such serious intention; though Mr. Emerson himself was so far influenced by the prevailing tendency as to offer to share his house with Mr. Alcott and his family, while suggesting that other like-minded persons should settle near them in Concord. Mr. Alcott himself speaks of Brook Farm as “our community;” but perhaps uses the words in a very general sense.

At any rate, Brook Farm established itself without them, and though Margaret Fuller often visited it, this letter to Mr. Emerson shows the motives, quite remote from Zenobia’s, with which she did so, — that she might be gentle, dull, and silent!

&emsp; “Your letter, my dear friend, was received just as I was on the wing to pass a few days with the fledglings of Community; and I have only this evening returned to answer it. I will come on Saturday afternoon next if no cross accident mar the horizon of my hopes, and the visible heavens drop not down Niagaras. All that I have to say may best be reserved till I come; it is necessary that I should be economical, for I have of late