the good fortune, for a time, to be personally connected with it," and
"his old and affectionately remembered home at Brook Farm" speak
volumes, as does also this little passage from "Blithedale Romance":--

"Often in these years that are darkening around me, I remember our
beautiful scheme of a noble and unselfish life, and how fair in that
first summer appeared the prospect that it might endure for
generations, and be perfected, as the ages rolled by, into the system
of a people and a world. Were my former associates now there--were
there only three or four of those true-hearted men still laboring in
the sun--I sometimes fancy that I should direct my world-weary
footsteps thitherward, and entreat them to receive me for old
friendship's sake. More and more I feel we struck upon what ought to be
a truth. Posterity may dig it up and profit by it."

In "Years of Experience" the writer, Georgiana (Bruce) Kirby, one of
the early associates, says:--

"Hawthorne, after spending a year at the Community, had now left. No
one could have been more out of place than he in a mixed company, no
matter how cultivated, worthy and individualized each member of it
might be. He was morbidly shy and reserved, needing to be shielded from
his fellows, and obtaining the fruits of observation at second-hand. He
was therefore not amenable to the democratic influences at the
Community which enriched the others, and made them declare, in after
years, that the years or months spent there had been the most valuable
ones in their lives."

Messrs. W. B. Allen, Minot Pratt, Warren Burton, Charles Hosmer, Isaac
Hecker and George C. Leach, with Mr. Hawthorne, devoted most of their