Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/440

Rh not but give the palm to the long dresses. Among the most graceful of the dancers among these, was the lovely Abbie A., the daughter of the President of the Phalanstery.

The ball was in other respects far more beautiful (even if the toilettes of the ladies were not so elegant) and the dancing in much better taste than that which I saw at Saratoga.

When I was making a sketch in my room of the beautiful groups of waiters at the first day's dinner, I asked them, one after the other, if they were happy in their life at this place? They replied unanimously that they could not imagine themselves happy under other circumstances. Life appeared to them rich and beautiful. How many young people in the homes of the Old World could give the same reply?

Among the ladies now members of the association was one still young, without beauty, but with a lofty intellectual forehead. The mind had pondered within this forehead upon the unjust distribution of human lots; upon the disproportion between the longings which she felt within herself and that portion in life which was hers, as a young woman of weak health and small means; she dwelt on these thoughts and this state of life until she became also insane. Rigid, evangelical relations counselled her “to bear her cross!” She came hither. Here she was received by love and freedom; the most invigorating atmosphere both for soul and body. Her being expanded and unfolded itself like a drooping flower. That life of social love, and that taste for fellow-citizenship which lay fettered within her, liberated itself, and she soon became one of the most active members of the little community, devoting herself to the cultivation of the garden, and to the care of its fruits and flowers. She is now a universal favourite in the little community, and is there only addressed by some appellation of