The income of the association was derived from various sources other than the prices paid for board.  There was a school for young children, presided over by Mrs. Ripley, assisted by various pupil-teachers, who thus partially recompensed the community for their own support.  Fruit, milk, and vegetables, when there were any to spare, were sent to the Boston markets.  Now and then some benevolent philanthropist with means would make a donation.  No one who entered was expected to contribute his whole income to the general purse, unless such income would not more than cover the actual expense incurred for him.  When Isaac Hecker went to West Roxbury the establishment included seventy inmates, who were distributed in several buildings bearing such poetical names as the Hive, the Eyrie, the Nest, and so on.  The number rose to ninety or a hundred before he left them, but the additions seem occasionally to have been in the nature of subtractions also, taking away more of the cultivation, refinement, and general good feeling which had been the distinguishing character of the place, than they added by their money or their labor.

Isaac Hecker was never an actual member of that inner community of whose aspirations and convictions the Farm was intended as an embodiment.  He entered at first as a partial boarder, paying four dollars a week, and undertaking also the bread-making, which until then had been very badly done, as he writes to his mother.  It should be understood that whatever was received from any inmate, either in money or labor, was accepted not as a mere return for food and shelter, but as an equivalent for such instruction as could be imparted by any other member of the collective family.  And there were many competent and brilliant men and women there, whose attainments not only qualified them amply for the tasks they then assumed, but have since made them prominent in American letters and journalism.  Mr. Ripley lectured on modern philosophy to all who desired an acquaintance with Spinoza, Kant, Cousin, and their compeers.  George P. Bradford was a thorough classical scholar.  Charles A. Dana, then fresh from Harvard, was an enthusiast for German literature, and successful in imparting both knowledge and enthusiasm to his pupils.  There were classes in almost everything that any one cared to study.  French and music, as we learn from one of Isaac’s letters home, were what he set himself to at the first.  The latter was taught by so accomplished a master as John S. Dwight, who conducted weekly singing-schools for both children and adults.

To what other studies Isaac may have applied himself we hardly know.  It will be noticed that Mr. George William Curtis, in the kindly reminiscences which he permits us to embody in this chapter, says that he does not remember him as “especially studious.”  The remark tallies with the impression we have gathered from the journal kept while he was there.  His mind was introverted.  Philosophical questions,