At a final visit to Brook Farm he said: "Most beautiful was that last day and all its memories; and never did I feel so calmly, humbly, devoutly thankful that it had been my privilege to fail in this grandest, sublimest, surest of all human movements. Were Thermopylae and Bunker Hill considered successes in their day and generation?"
Lying before me is a letter not intended for publication, showing how one member of the Association affectionately regarded his old home. It is as follows:--
"My Dear Friend:--I herewith return the letters you so kindly sent me. I have derived much pleasure in their perusal, and have looked on them with affectionate regard as a mode of greeting from old friends from whom I have been separated for more than a quarter of a century. I do not think any one who was at Brook Farm has that deep and sincere affection for it and its memory that I have. It was my mother by adoption, and what little I have of education, refinement, or culture and taste for matters above things material, I owe to her and the heroic and self-sacrificing men and women who composed its body, social and scholastic. I was but a cipher there, among them by accident, and I was much the gainer even if they were not the losers. What I saw there, and what I learned there, have been of great value to me, and if I have made any progress in material matters or have attained any social position, I am frank enough to confess that I owe it all to dear old Brook Farm. God bless its memory. What I have, and what I am, is the outgrowth of a two years' life at my first real home. . . .
"When I commenced this I intended to write but a half dozen lines, simply making my acknowledgment of your kindness, but my purpose soon changed, and I now find that I have not enough room on this sheet to say one tithe of what comes rushing in my mind 'as a river' about Brook Farm, and I can now only say that I wish you to convey my kindest regards to all of our dear old acquaintances whenever you see them or write to them. All Brook Farmers are to me as brothers and sisters, and I so esteem them.
I am tempted also to add the following extract from a letter written years ago by a friend of the movement in his eightieth year to his son:--