We desire to know through your own candid view of your prospects, as well as present condition, whether we may be justified in so disposing our affairs as to ultimately join your Association. At present I am laboring on my farm, near Cincinnati, having no definite plan of future action.
Please write me definitely upon what terms we may join you, how much I must put into the Association to secure the support of my family and myself--it being understood that we take hold as the rest of you do. Besides my wife I have a son sixteen years of age, another eleven, a third seven and a daughter four. We are all healthy, and I believe are about as well disposed as most families to live by our own personal exertions.
_Mr. Ripley_ DIR SIR I was requsted to pit the following on paper for the consideration of your society. R. H. wife and four children the oldest ten the youngest thre the two eldest boys, the two youngest girles. Furniture wile consist of thre beds and bedding one bedstead one tabel and workstand six or eight chairs crockery ware &c. Tooles and machinery as follows 1 planing machine 1 upright boaring machine 1 circular saw, irons for an upright saw morticing machine 1 turning lathe and belting 1 doz of hand screws 1 copper pot to make varnish in, two dimejons 3-5 gls. each for varnish and oil tooles for cutting bench screws &c likewise 1 cow 3 cosset sheep 1 yew & 2 wethers the cow 11 years old and little lame in one foot otherways a veryry good cow, also a verry light handcart. There are other articles not mentioned perhaps that might be usful to the Association that would be thrown in for the benefit of all.
The Association can consider the above articles and select wat articles would be usful or beneficial and let me know their action thereon at the next meeting of the Association If I should be called to visit my family before the next meeting you will pleas direct a line to me.
The Brook Farm wits would say that the writer of the above letter should go to college "for a _spell_."
DEAR FRIENDS, if I may so call you: I read in the New York _Tribune_ a piece taken from the _Dial_, headed "The West Roxbury Community." Now what I want to know is, can I and my children be admitted into your society, _and be better off than we are here?_ I have enough of the plainest kind to eat and wear. I have no _home_ but what we hire from year to year. I have _no property_ but movables, and not a cent to spare when the year comes round. I have _three children_, two boys and one girl: the oldest fourteen, the youngest nine. Now I want to educate them. How shall I do it in the country? There is no chance but ordinary schools. To move into the village I could not bring the year round, and the danger they would be exposed to without a father to restrain their wanderings, would be an undertaking more than I dare attempt.