“DEAR LOUEY,—Your handwriting improves very fast. Take pains and do not be in a hurry. I like to have you make observations about our conversations and your own thoughts. It helps you to express them and to understand your little self. Remember, dear girl, that a diary should be an epitome of your life. May it be a record of pure thought and good actions, then you will indeed be the precious child of your loving mother.”
_December 10th._—I did my lessons, and walked in the afternoon. Father read to us in dear “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Mr. L. was in Boston and we were glad. In the eve father and mother and Anna and I had a long talk. I was very unhappy, and we all cried. Anna and I cried in bed, and I prayed God to keep us all together.
As any one knows who has any experience in farming, the true farmer spirit shows itself in the man who accepts the disappointment of a meagre crop in spite of his dreams of a plentiful harvest, and working diligently, gets what he can from it.
The crops at Fruitlands underwent many vicissitudes. No sooner did a crop show some sort of promise than they turned it back into the earth again, in order to enrich the soil, they said. This method did not tend to fill the winter storehouse with the needed vegetables, and a faint suggestion of disillusionment began to creep into the perfect harmony of the consociate family as autumn approached. Early in September Mr. Alcott and Charles Lane went on a trip in search of recruits. They went to Providence and had an evening’s conversation with Mrs. Newcomb and some of her friends, during which Mr. Alcott said that, as competition had made facilities so great, they might take that opportunity to go on to New York. Charles Lane then spoke up and said there was no other objection than lack of means, whereupon the company contributed the necessary amount. In writing to Oldham about it, Charles Lane passes comment on what he saw: “We went to the Graham House to breakfast where we found some people half if not quite alive” and again: “The number of living persons in the 300,000 inhabitants of New York is very small.” During this visit they went to see Mrs. L. M. Child, who gave the following account of it:
“A day or two after [Theodore] Parker left, Alcott and Lane called to see me. I asked, ‘What brings you to New York?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Mr. Alcott; ‘it seems a miracle that we are here.’ Mr. Child and John Hopper went to hear a discussion between them and W. H. Channing. I asked Mr. Child what they talked about. ‘Lane divided man into three states,—the disconscious, the conscious, and the unconscious. The disconscious is the state of the pig; the conscious is the baptism by water; and the unconscious is the baptism by fire.’ I laughed, and said, ‘Well, how did the whole discussion affect your mind?’ ‘Why, after I heard them talk a few minutes, I ‘ll be cursed if I knew whether I had any mind at all.’ J. H. stayed rather longer, though he left in the midst. He said they talked about mind and body. ‘What did they say?’ ‘Why, Channing seemed to think there was some connection between mind and body; but those Boston folks, so far as I could understand ‘em, seemed to think the body was all sham!’”