Demorest's Family Magazine. July 1882. Vol. 18, No. 9
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NO. CCX.] • JULY, 1882. [Vol. XVIII., NO. 9. S i x t y Years Si x t y long years—how the time glides by! He stands on the mount, as Moses stood, How far away seems the land And looks o’er the land he’s trod; On whose sunny heights Hope and Youth He may have missed many a worldly gain, Stood lovingly hand in hand: But never the hand of God, Some flowers are dead that strewed life’s way, And if that’s led him on with beneficent cure, And some are blossoming sweetly to-day. He has all things to hope for and nothing to four. If he has sown good seed in the years gone by, How the heart travels back to its early prime. It will blossom in lovely grace; When the world seemed fair and sweet; If he’s brought no tears to the weary eyes, When never a thorn on the flowers grew, But has brightened with smiles some face, That clustered around the feet; Sweet is the balm that his deeds will bring, When shimmering bright in the distance far Glad is the song that his heart will sing. Glowed the glad vision of Hope’s clear star. Sixty long years— what visions arise The paths that the feet walked lightly then Of dynasties risen and set, Were green with a promise bright, Of power that melted away from the earth And the brave young heart felt never a fear, When the wrong and the right clashed and met; For it knew that the darkest night And Truth, like St. George, some fierce dragon slew, The stars come out, and the moonlight’s glow And the old died hard, to make way for the new. Falls on the hills and the world below. And Science spread wider and wider her wings, And the shining goal that the eyes discerned Till they stretched to the ends of the earth ; Stood high on a lofty slope; And marvels of light and marvels of sound The way was hard, but the will was strong, Sprang all at once into birth, And youth with its shield of hope And through the dark caves of old Ocean then Went forth to win for itself renown, The cable bore swiftly the message of men. And snatch for its brow the victor’s crown. Sixty long years—let us stand on the height, Who says that a man climbs all in vain, And viewing the wily we have trod When he reaches that temple bright, See the smoke of the altars like incense arise— Which Truth and Justice and Mercy enfold, The altars we’ve builded to God; With their wings all radiant and white ? And thus may they stand to His honor and praise, And he hears the songs that the angels sing, Who’s crowned with mercy our life's lengthened days. And he feels the sweep of an angel’s wing. E. B. Cheesborough. Vol. XVIII., July, 1882.—39 5 3 4 DEMOREST'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE. The Brook Farm Period in New England. beards ” is of itself characteristic of the period; for then almost every reputable man went shaven, and beards were? regarded as indicating the worst forms of social heresy. Charles Burleigh was even reproached with blasphemy in HE death of Ralph Waldo Emerson recalls to public the newspapers, I remember, for a length of beard and attention that extraordinary period of seething hair which gave him an undoubted resemblance to the radicalism which prevailed in New England, and early pictures of Christ. Lowell, then in the first flush of to some extent beyond it, when he was in his prime. It his youthful radicalism, wore his beard also, and it was was an era so unlike the present that it seems centuries considered an artist’s whim in both poet and painter when away. The eighty-two pestilent heresies that were already Page depicted him under that guise, in the portrait which reckoned up in Massachusetts before 1638, or the “ gene now looks down the stairway at Elmwood. Thus, be ration of odd names and natures ” which the Earl of tween the things that were not really eccentric but only Strafford found among the English Roundheads, could seemed to be, and the things that were half crazy but hardly surpass those of which Boston was the center and seemed to their projectors to be sane, it is plain that Horace Greeley’s Tribune, to some extent, the organ, be good sense had a hard time of it. Yet what a period it tween the year 1840 and the absorbing political excite was in which to be born and reared; what infinite ment of 1848. The best single picture of the time is to hope, what boundless hospitality to what was called be found in Emerson’s lecture on “ New England Re “ the newness,” what mutual help and kindliness among formers,” delivered in March, 1844; but it tells only a the “ like-minded!” I always thought that its chief small part of the story. Carlyle’s works had stimulated benefit came to those who, like myself, appeared up youthful minds in England; Fourier’s writings had made on the scene just too late to be active participants in a certain impression in France: and German literature any excesses, but in time to share the impulse and played an important part in the whole movement; but the glow. America was, after all, thechosen scene. It shows that good sense on the whole prevailed under The mental agitation ranged from the most cultivated all vagaries, when we consider that in all these circles Mr. to the most ignorant persons; German theology, as inter Emerson was revered; and that his calm nature, shrink preted by Brownson and Parker, reached one class, while ing from extremes, held its own way undisturbed through the Second Advent movement fired another. The Anti- everything. Through what adulation, what deference, Slavery agitation was a feeder to the whole excitement, did that man live ! I remember that after one of his supplying a class of persons who were ready to forsake all courses of lectures in Boston he used to hold receptions at and follow conscience. The Hutchinson family were its the rooms of a cultivated young- bachelor of that city minstrels:—a band of Puritan Bohemians—five or six long who was like the Riggs girls “ interested in all the re haired and black-eyed striplings, grouped around one forms.” This youth was especially interested. Zealous rose-bud of a sister. Edward Palmer fulminated against in behalf of Fourierism—the outside of his door dis the use of money; phrenology and physiology, then ranked played a blazing sun with spreading yellow rays and this together, contributed to the speculative enthusiasm; Al- motto in the center: “ Universal Unity.” Beneath it was cott preached what Carlyle called “ a potato gospel;” another inscription in neat black and white letters, Graham denounced bolted flour; the water-cure was com “ Please wipe your feet ! ” Into this domain, thus em ing into favor; the body must be fed and clothed and blazoned and thus guarded, the philosopher and his pros bathed upon new and saintly principles. The wildest specu elytes would enter and commune after a lecture, and lations and practices not only prevailed, but must be the group of admiring youths and maidens around the linked together; reform was not a series of convictions, seer was as well worth studying as anything which their but a general attitude; you were expected to accept the teacher could give. I remember, for instance, that Mr. whole “ sisterhood of reforms,” as now to vote the whole Emerson had been telling me, one evening in the winter party ticket. When, in 1847, I went to reside for some of 1848-9, of Clough’s new poem in hexameters then just, years in a manufacturing town in Massachusetts, where published, which at first bore the name of “ The B oth ie the operatives were still chiefly American farmers' daugh of Toper-na-Fuosich.” Being baffled by the Gaelic name, ters, one of my radical acquaintances was quite amazed that I offered Mr. Emerson a pencil and card to write it down I, who passed for a reformer, was yet unacquainted with for me; as I withdrew, a maiden stepped modestly for “ the Riggs girls,” who worked in one of the mills. “ Not ward with duplicate card and pencil, saying, “ You know the Riggs girls ! ” he said. “ You ought to know promised it to me too, Mr. Emerson.” To her succeeded them ! Interested in all the reforms—temperance, anti a second maiden, “ And to me, Mr. Emerson;” and when slavery—bathe in cold water every morning, and one of yet a third appeared, the sage said, his wonted smile ’em’s a Grahamite.” I afterward became acquainted with broadening a little, " Do you also wish the name of the these young ladies, and found them exceedingly sensible book?” “ Oh, anything, anything,” responded the con and well-informed women. fused girl, eager only for the autograph, and careless Mr. Emerson, in a paper in the “ D ia l” for July, 1842, whether it came in the shape of a Gaelic name or one in on the “ Convention of Friends of Universal Reform” in Choctaw. Boston, says truly of that gathering: “ If the assembly I was never a resident of Brook Farm even for a far was disorderly, it was picturesque. Madmen, madwomen, but used to make brief calls there with a cousin of mine men with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come-outers, who, as niece of Mrs.