“When will you come back to Brook Farm?  Can you do without us?  Can we do without you?  But do not come as an amateur, a self-perfectionizer, an aesthetic self-seeker, willing to suck the orange of Association dry and throw away the peel.  Oh! that you would come as one of us, to work in the faith of a divine idea, to toil in loneliness and tears for the sake of the kingdom which God may build up by our hands.  All here, that is, all our old central members, feel more and more the spirit of devotedness, the thirst to do or die, for the cause we have at heart.  We do not distrust Providence.  We cannot believe that what we have gained here of spiritual progress will be lost through want of material resources.  At present, however, we are in great straits.  We hardly dare to provide the means of keeping warm in our pleasant nest this winter.

“Just look at our case.  With property amounting to $30,000, the want of two or three thousands fetters us and may kill us.  That sum would free us from pecuniary embarrassment, and for want of that we work daily with fetters on our limbs.  Are there not five men in New York City who would dare to venture $200 each in the cause of social reform, without being assured of a Phalanx for themselves and their children for ever?  Alas!  I know not.  We are willing to traverse the wilderness forty years; we ask no grapes of Eshcol for ourselves; we do not claim a fair abode in the promised land; but what can we do, with neither quails nor manna, with raiment waxing old, and shoes bursting from our feet?

“Forgive me, my dear Isaac, for speaking so much about ourselves.  But what else should I speak of?  And who more sympathizing with our movement than yourself?

“Do not be surprised at receiving this letter so long after date.  Not less than four times have I begun it, and as often have been interrupted.  Pray write me now and then.  Your words are always sweet and pleasant to my soul.  Believe me, ever yours truly,

“GEORGE RIPLEY.”

“Harvard, Mass., November 11, 1843.—­DEAR FRIEND:  Your kind letter of the 1st came duly to hand, and we are making arrangements to enjoy the benefit of your healthful bequest.

“Please to accept thanks for your sympathy and the reports of persons and things in your circle.  They have interested me much but I am about to make you the most incongruous return conceivable.  For pleasure almost unqualified which you have conferred on me, I fear I shall trouble you with painful relations; in return for a barrel of superfine wholesome wheat-meal, I am going to submit to you a peck of troubles.  Out of as many of these as you lovingly and freely can, you may assist me; but, of course, you will understand that I feel I have no claim upon you.  On the contrary, indeed, I see that I run the hazard of forfeiting your valued friendship by thus obtruding my pecuniary concerns into our hitherto loftier communings.  You know it to be a sentiment of mine, that these affairs should never be obtruded between aesthetic friends, but what can one do in extremity but to unburden candidly to the generous?