“July 5.—­My brother George has been here; he stayed three days.  He told me he had often talked with my brother John about living a life higher, nobler, and more self-denying than he had done.  It appears from his conversation that since I left home they have been impressed with a deeper and better spirit.  To me it is of much interest to decide what I shall do.  I have determined to make a visit to Fruitlands.  To leave this place is to me a great sacrifice.  I have been much refined in being here.

“To stay here—­to purchase a place for myself—­or to go home.  These are questions about which I feel the want of some friend to consult with.  I have no one to whom I can go for advice.  If I wish to be self-denying, one would say at home is the best, the largest field for my activity.  This may be true in one sense.  But is it wise to go where there are the most difficulties to overcome?  Would it not be better to plant the tree in the soil where it can grow most in every direction?  At home, to be sure, if I have strength to succeed, I may, perhaps, do the most good, and it may be the widest sphere for me.  But there are many difficulties which have such a direct influence on one to injure, to blight all high and noble sentiments, that I fear to encounter them, and I am not sure it is my place.  Perhaps it would be best for me not to speculate on the future, but look to Him who is above for wise direction in all that concerns my life.  Sacrifices must be made.  I must expect and accept them in a meek, humble, and willing spirit.”

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CHAPTER VIII

FRUITLANDS

WHAT influenced Isaac Hecker to leave Brook Farm, a place so congenial in many ways to his natural dispositions, was, plainly enough, his tendency to seek a more ascetic and interior life than he could lead there.  The step cost him much, but he had received all that the place and his companions could give him, and his departure was inevitable.

His next move in pursuit if his ideal took him to Fruitlands.  This was a farm, situated near Harvard, in Worcester Co., Massachusetts, which had been bought by Mr. Charles Lane, an English admirer of Amos Bronson Alcott, with the hope of establishing on it a new community in consonance with the views and wishes of the latter.  Perhaps Fruitlands could never, at any stage of its existence as a corporate home for Mr. Alcott’s family and his scanty following of disciples, have been truly described as in running order, but when Isaac Hecker went there, on July 11, 1843, it was still in its incipiency.  He had paid the Fruitlanders a brief visit toward the end of June, and thought that he saw in them evidences of “a deeper life.”  It speaks volumes for his native sagacity and keen eye for realities, that less than a fortnight’s residence with Mr. Alcott should have sufficed to dispel this illusion.