Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/108

 “The serpent may one day enter your paradise, and then—how can you expel it?”

I told them also how I had felt that morning; how empty and dead a life of labour seemed to me which was not allied to the service of the Supreme, which did not admit of space for the holy and the beautiful.

An elderly gentleman, who sat near me, with a very good and honest countenance, but who had a horrible trick of incessant spitting, was the person who in particular replied to my objections. But his reply and that of the others merely served to strengthen my impression of the cloudy state in which the intellect here is at present. I therefore remained silent after I had given my opinion. But I and many others hoped that Channing would have spoken. He, however, did not; but sat listening with his beautiful speaking head, and his beaming glance turned towards the disputants. After that Bergfalk and I began to talk with each other in Swedish, in order that they might hear that extraordinary foreign tongue. We placed ourselves opposite each other, in the midst of the company, and conversed in Swedish for the edification of our very attentive audience.

I was again requested to play for the young people. The following day at noon we were to leave. In the morning, about half a dozen beautiful young girls seized upon me, and conducted me from one house to another, and I played to all the mothers and grandmothers in the Phalanstery, and upon every piano which was to be found there, six or seven in number; and the young creatures were so charmed and so excited with the marches and the polskas and the songs which I played to them, that they both laughed and cried. N.B. Music as yet in the Phalanstery is merely a babe in swaddling clothes; they regard at present their work as their play. It is true nevertheless that the children there are unusually cheerful; the very little ones were in particular most charming.