effort. Nevertheless he did the best he could.

It is delightful to think of the tremendous energy with which he worked
at Brook Farm. No one else seems to have done so much hard labor there.
He was better fitted for this than many of his colleagues, having a
strong, full-chested frame, and is said in his youth to have been a very
swift runner and skater; but nothing indicates better the latent force
that was in this quiet and usually inactive man. Many of the Brook Farm
adventurers were not physically equal to a solid day's work, but this
was a contingency which nobody had foreseen.

[Illustration: HAWTHORNE. AFTER AN ENGRAVING FROM THE PAINTING BY
C. G. THOMPSON.]

Hawthorne was one of the first to discover the futility of the
experiment. Early in the following year he wrote to Miss Sophia Peabody
to whom he was then engaged: "It has become quite evident to me that our
fortunes are not to be found in this place;" a conclusion which he no
doubt arrived at from an examination of the accounts of the association.
It was Hawthorne's salvation in the difficult path of life he had
chosen; a path as difficult and dangerous as that of an Alpine climber,
that, poet as he was, he always looked facts sternly in the face and did
not permit himself to be misled by romantic or sentimental illusions.

It had been expected that the more brilliant members of the community
would be able to write magazine articles, or other remunerative
literature, in their hours of leisure, and money thus obtained would go
into the common fund. Hawthorne found that he could do nothing of the
kind. Two or three hours' work in the sun did not quite deprive him of
the use of his brains, but it left him without either fancy or