Not all of the ministers whose names have just been mentioned were of one mind, either as to the special evils to be counteracted or the remedies which might be tentatively applied.  Three different associations took their rise from among this handful of earnest seekers after better social methods.  Mr. Ballou, who headed one of these, believed that unity and cohesion could be most surely obtained by a frank avowal of beliefs, aims, and practices, to which all present and future associates would be expected to conform.  Mrs. Kirby, whose interesting volume* we have already quoted, says that the platform of this party bound them to abolitionism, anti-orthodoxy, women’s rights, total abstinence, and opposition to war.  They established themselves at Hopedale, Massachusetts, where, so far as our knowledge goes, some vestige of them may still remain, though the analogies and probabilities are all against such a survival.  A second band of “come-outers,” as people used to be called in that day and region, when they abandoned the common road for reasons not obviously compulsory, went to Northampton in the same State, and from there into corporate obscurity.

[* Years of Experience. New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1887.]

Mr. Ripley’s scheme was more elastic, and if the money basis of the association had been more solid, there seems no reason on the face of things why this community at Brook Farm might not have enjoyed a much longer lease of life.  It seems to have left a most pleasant memory in the minds of all who were ever members of it.  In matters of belief and of opinion no hard-and-fast lines were drawn at any point.  In matters of conduct, the morality of self-respecting New-Englanders who were at a farther remove from Puritanic creeds than from Puritanic discipline, was regarded as a sufficient guarantee of social decorum.  Of the earliest additions to the co-operative household, a sprinkling were already Catholic; others, including the wife and the niece of the founder, afterwards became so.  Some attended orthodox Protestant churches; the majority were probably Unitarians.  Discussion on all subjects appears to have been free, frank, and good-tempered.

There was no attempt made at any communism except that of intellectual and social gifts and privileges.  There was a common table, and Mrs. Kirby has given us some attractive glimpses of the good feeling, and kindly gayety, and practical observance of the precept to “bear one another’s burdens” which came into play around it.  For many months, as no one could endure to have his equal serve him, and all were equals, there was a constant getting up and down at table so that each might help himself.  Afterwards, when decline had already set in, so far as the material basis of the undertaking was concerned, and those who had its success most at heart had begun to study Fourier for fruitful suggestions, the first practical hint from that quarter resulted in Mr. Dana’s