persons, the numbers at the farm increased
rapidly, though never above one hundred and twenty people were there at
a time. It is estimated, however, that about two hundred individuals
were connected with the Community from first to last. Of these all the
well-known ones are now dead, unless, indeed, one is to count among the
"Farmers" Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz, who as a very young girl was a teacher
in the infant department of the school.

Yet though the Farmers have almost all passed beyond, delicious
anecdotes about them are all the time coming to light. There is one
story of "Sam" Larned which is almost too good to be true. Larned, it is
said, steadily refused to drink milk on the ground that his relations
with the cow did not justify him in drawing on her reserves, and when it
was pointed out to him that he ought on the same principle to abandon
shoes, he is said to have made a serious attempt to discover some more
moral type of footwear.

And then there is another good story of an instance when Brook Farm
hospitality had fatal results. An Irish baronet, Sir John Caldwell,
fifth of that title, and treasurer-general at Canada, after supping with
the Community on its greatest delicacy, pork and beans, returned to the
now departed Tremont House in Boston, and died suddenly of apoplexy!

This baronet's son was wont later to refer to the early members of the
Community as "extinct volcanoes of transcendental nonsense and
humbuggery." But no witty sallies of this sort are able to lessen in
the popular mind the reverence with which this Brook Farm essay in
idealism must ever be held. For this Community, when all is said,
remains the most successful and the most interesting failure the world
has ever known.

MARGARET FULLER: MARCHESA D'OSSOLI

Any account of Brook Farm which should neglect to dwell upon the part
played in the community life by Margaret Fuller, Marchesa d'Ossoli,
would be almost like the play of "Hamlet" with the Prince of Denmark
left out. For although Margaret Fuller never lived at Brook Farm--was,
indeed, only an occasional visitor there--her influence pervaded the
place, and, as we feel from reading the "Blithedale Romance," she was
really, whether absent or present, the strongest personality connected
with the experiment.

Hawthorne's first bucolic experience was with the famous "transcendental
heifer" mistakenly said to have been the property of Margaret Fuller. As
a matter of fact, the beas