comeliness, he was forced to buy and set straight and smooth into a
decent dependence of the mansion house. The estate, upon passing into
Mr. Emerson's hands, comprised the house, barn, and two acres of land.
He has enlarged house and barn, and the two acres have grown to nine.
Our author is no farmer, except as every country gentleman is, yet the
kindly slope from the rear of the house to a little brook, which,
passing to the calm Concord beyond, washes the edge of his land,
yields him at least occasional beans and pease--or some friend,
agriculturally enthusiastic and an original Brook-Farmer, experiments
with guano in the garden, and produces melons and other vines with a
success that relieves Brook Farm from every slur of inadequate
practical genius. Mr. Emerson has shaded his originally bare land with
trees, and counts near a hundred apple and pear trees in his orchard.
The whole estate is quite level, inclining only towards the little
brook, and is well watered and convenient.

The Orphic Alcott--or Plato Skimpole, as Aspasia called him--well
known in the transcendental history of New England, designed and with
his own hands erected a summer-house, which gracefully adorns the
lawn, if I may so call the smooth grass-plot at the side of the house.
Unhappily, this edifice promises no longer duration, not being
"technically based and pointed". This is not a strange, although a
disagreeable fact, to Mr. Emerson, who has been always the most
faithful and appreciative of the lovers of Mr. Alcott. It is natural
that the Orphic Alcott should build graceful summer-houses. There are
even people who declare that he has covered the pleasant but somewhat
misty lawns of ethical speculation with a thousand such edifices,
which need only to be a little more "technically based and pointed" to
be quite perfect. At present they whisper, the wind blows clean
through them, and no figures of flesh and blood are ever seen there,