Therefore, if we built splendid castles (phalansteries perhaps they
might be more fitly called), and pictured beautiful scenes, among the
fervid coals of the hearth around which we were clustering, and if all
went to rack with the crumbling embers and have never since arisen out
of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I
rejoice that I could once think better of the world's improvability
than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in
a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature that can thus
magnanimously persist in error.
Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our conversation; but when he did
speak, it was very much to some practical purpose. For
instance:--"Which man among you," quoth he, "is the best judge of
swine? Some of us must go to the next Brighton fair, and buy half a
dozen pigs."
Pigs! Good heavens! had we come out from among the swinish multitude
for this? And again, in reference to some discussion about raising
early vegetables for the market:--"We shall never make any hand at
market gardening," said Silas Foster, "unless the women folks will
undertake to do all the weeding. We haven't team enough for that and
the regular farm-work, reckoning three of your city folks as worth one
common field-hand. No, no; I tell you, we should have to get up a
little too early in the morning, to compete with the market gardeners
round Boston."
It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first questions raised,
after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world,
should relate to the possibility of getting the advantage over the
outside barbarians in their own field of labor. But, to own the truth,
I very soon became sensible that, as regarded society at large, we
stood in a position of new hostility, rather than new brotherhood. Nor
could this fail to be the case, in some degree, until the bigger and
better half of society should range itself on our side. Constituting so
pitiful a minority as now, we were inevitably estranged from the rest
of mankind in pretty fair proportion with the strictness of our mutual
bond among ourselves.
This dawning idea, however, was driven back into my inner consciousness
by the entrance of Zenobia. She came with the welcome intelligence
that supper was on the table. Looking at herself in the glass, and
perceiving that her one magnificent flower had grown rather languid
(probably by being exposed to the fervency of the kitchen fire), she
flung it on the floor, as unconcernedly as a village girl would throw
away a faded violet. The action seemed proper to her character,
although, methought, it would still more have befitted the bounteous
nature of this beautiful woman to scatter fresh flowers from her hand,
and to revive faded ones by her touch. Nevertheless, it was a singular
but irresistible effect; the presence of Zenobia caused our heroic
enterprise to show like an illusion, a masquerade, a pastoral, a
counterfeit Arcadia, in which we grown-up men and women were making a
play-day of the years that were given us to live in. I tried to
analyze this impression, but not with much success.