by any spiritual attraction, but was hired at good wages to superintend
the work, and who always seemed to be regarding the whole affair with the
most good-natured wonder as a prodigious masquerade....

"But beneath all the glancing colors, the lights and shadows of its
surface, it was a simple, honest, practical effort for wiser forms of life
than those in which we find ourselves. The criticism of science, the sneer
of literature, the complaint of experience is that man is a miserably
half-developed being, the proof of which is the condition of human society,
in which the few enjoy and the many toil. But the enjoyment cloys and
disappoints, and the very want of labor poisons the enjoyment. Man is made,
body and soul. The health of each requires reasonable exercise. If every
man did his share of the muscular work of the world, no other man would be
overwhelmed by it. The man who does not work imposes the necessity of
harder toil upon him who does. Thereby the first steals from the last the
opportunity of mental culture--and at last we reach a world of pariahs and
patricians, with all the inconceivable sorrow and suffering that surround
us. Bound fast by the brazen age, we can see that the way back to the age
of gold lies through justice, which will substitute co-operation for
competition.

"That some such generous and noble thought inspired this effort at
practical Christianity is most probable. The Brook Farmers did not
interpret the words,'the poor ye have always with ye,' to mean,'ye must
always keep some of you poor.' They found the practical Christian in him
who said to his neighbor, 'Friend, come up higher.' But, apart from any
precise and defined intention, it was certainly a very alluring
prospect--that of life in a pleasant country, taking exercise in useful
toil, and surrounded with the most interesting and accomplished people.
Compared with other efforts upon which time and money and industry are