lavished, measured by Colorado and Nevada speculations, by California
gold-washing, by oil-boring, and by the stock exchange, Brook Farm was
certainly a very reasonable and practical enterprise, worthy of the hope
and aid of generous men and women. The friendships that were formed there
were enduring. The devotion to noble endeavor, the sympathy with all that
is most useful to men, the kind patience and constant charity that were
fostered there, have been no more lost than grain dropped upon the field.
It is to the Transcendentalism that seemed to so many good souls both
wicked and absurd that some of the best influences of American life
to-day are due. The spirit that was concentrated at Brook Farm is
diffused, but it is not lost. As an organized effort, after many downward
changes, it failed; but those who remember the Hive, the Eyrie, the
Cottage; when Margaret Fuller came and talked, radiant with bright humor;
when Emerson and Parker and Hedge joined the circle for a night or a day;
when those who may not be publicly named brought beauty and wit and
social sympathy to the feast; when the practical possibilities of life
seemed fairer, and life and character were touched ineffaceably with good
influence, cherish a pleasant vision which no fate can harm, and remember
with ceaseless gratitude the blithe days of Brook Farm."

Curtis returned to the same subject in 1874, in discussing Frothingham's
biography of George Ripley. Some of the errors into which writers about
Brook Farm had fallen he undertook to correct, to point out the real
character of the association, and its effort at the improvement of
society.

"The Easy Chair describes Brook Farm as an Arcadia, for such in effect was
the intention, and such is the retrospect to those who recall the hope
from which it sprang.... The curious visitors who came to see poetry in
practice saw with dismay hard work on every side, plain houses and simple