s seems to call
on Polycrates to cast forth his ring. She seemed the very
genius of the scene, so calm, so lofty, and so secluded. I
never saw any place that seemed to me so much like home. The
beauty, though so great, is so unobtrusive.

'As we glided along the river, I could frame my community far
more naturally and rationally than ----. A few friends should
settle upon the banks of a stream like this, planting their
homesteads. Some should be farmers, some woodmen, others
bakers, millers, &c. By land, they should carry to one another
the commodities; on the river they should meet for society. At
sunset many, of course, would be out in their boats, but they
would love the hour too much ever to disturb one another. I
saw the spot where we should discuss the high mysteries that
Milton speaks of. Also, I saw the spot where I would invite
select friends to live through the noon of night, in silent
communion. When we wished to have merely playful chat, or talk
on politics or social reform, we would gather in the mill, and
arrange those affairs while grinding the corn. What a happy
place for children to grow up in! Would it not suit little
---- to go to school to the cardinal flowers in her boat,
beneath the great oak-tree? I think she would learn more than
in a phalanx of juvenile florists. But, truly, why has such a
thing never been? One of these valleys so immediately suggests
an image of the fair company that might fill it, and live so
easily, so naturally, so wisely. Can we not people the banks
of some such affectionate little stream? I distrust ambitious
plans, such as Phalansterian organizations!

'---- is quite bent on trying his experiment. I hope he may
succeed; but as they were talking the other evening, I
thought of the river, and all the pretty symbols the tide-mill
presents, and felt if I could at all adjust the economics to
the more simple procedure, I would far rather be the miller,
hoping to attract by natural affinity some congenial baker,
"und so weiter." However, one thing seems sure, that many
persons will soon, somehow, somewhere, throw off a part, at
least, of these terrible weights of the social contract, and
see if they cannot lie more at ease in the lap of Nature. I
do not feel the same interest in these plans, as if I had a
firmer hold on l