commendable share of reason and of hope."

Ripley did found his Brook Farm, and a lot of good people went and
lived there--not Emerson; he was just a trifle too sane to be won
over completely, but even he used to go into his own garden and
dig in a socialistic way until his little boy warned him not to
dig his foot.

That is the trouble with communism, those who dig are apt to dig
their feet. It is easier to call a spade a spade than to use one.
Men may be born free and equal, but if they are, they do not show
it. From his first breath man is oppressed by the conditions of
his existence, and life is a struggle with environment. Freedom
and liberty are terms of relative not absolute value. The
absolutism of the commune is oppression refined, each man must dig
even if he digs his own foot. The plea of the anarchist for
liberty is more consistent than the plea of the communist,--the
one does demand a wild, lawless freedom for individual initiative;
the other demands the very refinement of interference with liberty
of mind and body.

The evolutionist looks on with philosophic indifference, knowing
that what is to be will be, that the stream of tendency is not to
be checked or swerved by vaporings, but moves irresistibly onward,
though every thought, every utterance, every experiment, however
wild, however visionary, has its effect.

We of the practical world sojourning in the Shaker village may
commiserate the disciples of theory, but they are happy in their
own way,--possibly happier in their seclusion and routine than we