When Mr. Greeley first came to our house, I was not very favorably impressed by his appearance. He was tall and strongly built with broad shoulders somewhat bent forward, a smooth face, fair complexion and very light hair worn rather long. He was near-sighted and, like other near-sighted folk had a way of peering forward as he walked, and this with his heavy lurching gait, gave him a very awkward, countrified carriage. He remarked in my presence at a later time, “I learned to walk in the furrows of a New Hampshire farm and the clogging clay has stuck to my feet ever since.”

His voice was thin and high-pitched, a small voice for such a big man, as we thought, and he had an abrupt manner of withdrawing attention that was to us rather disconcerting until we got used to it. His pockets were bulging with newspapers and memoranda, scrawled in the curiously obscure handwriting which I subsequently found much difficulty in learning to read, though it was plain enough when the meaning of the strange hieroglyphics intended for letters was once fully understood. He was pressed with business during his brief visits but found time to make friends with the juveniles of the family and we learned to welcome him with real pleasure. My mother noted that we made him smile, and that went far in establishing intimacy. Horace Greeley’s rare smile revealed beauty of character and that charity commended by St. Paul as greater than faith or hope; a smile more nearly angelic than we often see in this mundane environment.

His peculiarities of dress have been, I think, much exaggerated by common gossip. He wanted his clothes made big and easy, and he wore them a long time and somewhat negligently, but that was because he had other things to mind and not in the least because he affected singularity. I was with him a good deal as a boy and as a young man and I am sure he spoke truly when in response to some friendly advice concerning these matters, he said “I buy good cloth, go to a good tailor and pay a good price, and that is all I can do about it.”

The popular phrase about Greeley’s old white coat had some foundation in fact, but not much. He did wear a light drab overcoat when I first saw him, with the full pockets spreading out on each side. As it suited him he wore it many years afterward, and when it was quite worn out he had another one made just like it which he wore many years more. I doubt if he ever had more than two of these famous garments, but it is true that these two, always supposed to be the same old white coat, were known all over the Northern part of the country. As late as the first Grant presidential campaign, Elder Evans, inviting him to make an address before the Shaker community at Harvard, Mass., asked him to please bring “the old white coat, that our folk may know it is you, for sure.”

It is possible there may have been some little feeling of resentment against this sort of patronage expressed in the dragging on of the old white coat with the sleeves awry and the collar turned under, but I am sure that as a rule Mr. Greeley gave very little thought as to wherewithal he would be clothed.

Horace Greeley never had half a chance to develop the finer qualities of his nature—and he knew it. He was a tremendous worker and as an aggressive editor, an ambitious politician and an ardent reformer, driven like a steam engine, he could give little heed to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but he was sensitive as a girl to rebuffs bringing to mind what might have been. Among friends with whom he felt at home and in really congenial company, he was a different being from the hard hitting fighter and eccentric philosopher known to the public. At our home he was with the children like a child, genial and companionable as an elder brother. In the house of the Carey sisters, where I saw him years later, he was happy and care-free. Phoebe and Alice Carey, poets and essayists, had Sunday evening gatherings at their home in New York, where the choice spirits of the literary world held converse after the manner of their kind, as at the assemblies in the Paris salons of the 18th century. In this company Mr. Greeley was at his best, animated, witty and charmingly affable. He realized, only too well, that his best was wasted in the strife which was his daily portion and which ended in the disastrous defeat that cost him his life. The flashes of aroused egotism that sometimes blazed out in red-hot words, were only signs of impatience and regret that he had been deprived of opportunity to cultivate the amenities and graces of life and to gain control of the higher powers he consciously possessed. Any one who will take the trouble to-day to read his later writings, his tribute to old friends and his essays like that on “Growing Old Gracefully,” will be led to know that Horace Greeley had the soul of a poet.

Through acquaintance with Thurlow Weed my father came to know Mr. Greeley and through Mr. Greeley he came to know Dr. George Ripley and the circle of literary folk in Boston of which he was the center. Boston was not at that time a literary city. If there was a seat of literature in America, then, it was to be found in Philadelphia, there being very little visible evidence of literary activity, in the three-hilled town; no Old Corner Book Store, no publishing house like Ticknor and Fields, no Scarlet Letter, no Atlantic Monthly and no Evening Transcript, subsequently one of the best newspapers from a literary point of view this country ever had. There was, however, at the period referred to, about 1840, a coterie of brilliant intellectual people in Boston and Cambridge many of whom attained, later, some degree of eminence in the literary world.

These were young men and women of fine culture, liberal in opinion and animated by a new spirit of the times which was in this country first manifested in their midst. At that period a wave of interest in what was then known as social reform swept over France and Germany and reached our shores in Massachusetts Bay, eventually extending all through the north and northwest, conveying new social and political ideas to thousands of intelligent Americans. These new ideas were discussed at the meetings of the thinking young folk above referred to, at which meetings they also held other high debates on matters philosophic, poetic, educational, etc. They eventually established a periodical as their organ called The Dial, a publication which immediately attracted wide attention by the admirable literary style of its articles as well as by their originality and commanding interest. The Dial had the effect of imparting greater cohesion to the company of editors, contributors and others interested in its publication, and these presently became known to the world as the Transcendentalists; a word borrowed from Germany and rather too formidable for general use in our busy country.

Whether they were overweighted by their ponderous title or whether they created an artificial atmosphere too etherial for common mortals, the first generation of Transcendentalists was also the last. They had no successors and The Dial, as their organ, was short lived. It undoubtedly exercised a considerable influence in its day; and individual members of the long-named fraternity did much to mould the thought of the American people in after years. Among these were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, George William Curtis, Francis George Shaw, translator of Eugene Sue and of George Sand, and father of Colonel Robert Shaw, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Dr. Howe and his fiancee Julia Ward, Charles A. Dana, John S. Dwight and perhaps a score of other bright spirits. Occasional attendants at their gatherings and contributors to The Dial were Horace Greeley, William Page, afterward President of The National Academy of Design, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and my father, Charles Sears. Their acknowledged leader was the Rev. George Ripley, the founder of Brook Farm.

I do not know anything more about this old time Transcendentalism than I do about the Pragmatism of our day, and that is not much. I believe the two schools of thought were alike in this, they both held that modern civilization has gone sadly and badly astray in the pursuit of wealth. Not money but the love of money is, now as ever, the root of all evil. The first work of the makers of America was necessarily the creation of property, the accumulation of the means of life, but we have pushed this pursuit too far, have gone money mad not knowing when we should stop trying to get rich and give our time and attention to higher things.

There is another matter to be noted as of some significance namely that leading Transcendentalists were, and leading Pragmatists now are, scholars and university men. It is true America was not turning out university men in the ’40’s and it might perhaps better be said that the Transcendentalists were college men, but as several of them were educated in Germany the connotation may be allowed to stand. It was said of these learned students that at their meetings they read Dante in the original Italian, Hegel in the original German, Swedenborg in the original Latin, which language the Swedish seer always used, Charles Fourier in the original French, and perhaps the hardest task of all, Margaret Fuller in the original English. Margaret was an honored member of the illustrious company and was held in high esteem; but her writings are mighty hard reading. I can quite understand James Russell Lowell’s judgment in his “Fable For Critics” where he condemns a certain literary offender to severe punishment, sentencing him to 30 days at hard labor, reading the works of Margaret Fuller.

It was, as above said, after one of his visits to Boston that my father came home with the suggestion of sending Althea and myself to school at Brook Farm. The idea met with a good deal of opposition from the Dutch side of the house, which was my side for all I was worth, but I suppose father opined that it was time some of the provincialism of the Old Colonie should be rubbed off. Through his acquaintance with Thurlow Weed he came to know Mr. Greeley and through Mr. Greeley was introduced to Dr. Ripley and the Transcendentalists, gaining, by the way, broader views and a wider range of ideas than those which had prevailed in Beaver Street for two hundred years. Such, I take it was the sequence of events, not as noted by a little boy but as partly imagined and partly reasoned out at a later time. Partly imagined, too, is the presumption that my father was attracted by the philosophic ideals presented by his Boston friends. A tired business man might well be impressed by the Transcendental teaching that our civilization has gone wrong in forcing all human energy into the one pursuit, that of getting riches. They held that while hard work rarely harms any one, the monotonous grind in the money making mills results in arrested development. Work as hard as you please, spend all the energy, all the talent, all the skill you have but not in seeking wealth. That is not worth while, and it prevents the doing of what is worth while. Do your best in the world; give all you can, but be sure to get a fair return, not in money but in better things. Seek culture, seek knowledge, seek character, seek friendship, good will, good health, good conscience, and the peace that passeth understanding shall be added unto you. Be content with a small measure of this world’s wealth and do not crave costly luxuries to make a show withal. To this end, go out into the country; raise what you need as far as possible with your own hands, and enough more to exchange for such things as you cannot produce. Abandon the world, the flesh and the Devil and go back to the soil and find the Garden of Eden.

My father accepted these teachings in good faith and gave in his testimony with those who in The Dial and through other agencies were propagating the new philosophy. His engagements with others were such that he could not break away at the time to put these novel ideas to the test of actual experiment but no doubt he thought it wise and well to give his children an early initiation into the new life that was to regenerate the world.

Dr. Ripley was, as said, the leader of the Transcendental coterie and he had all the vitalizing enthusiasm that a leader must necessarily possess. He was a solidly built man of medium height with brown hair and beard and the kindest eyes in the world. He was a Unitarian clergyman, a scholar learned in all the learning of the Egyptians and all the other learned peoples of every age and clime, and a gentleman of the most engagingly courteous address; his good manners rested on bed rock foundations, too, and could not be corrupted by evil communications. I saw him more than once in straits harsh enough to try the patience of a saint, and noted with surprised admiration that his perfect poise was not in the least disturbed.

It was Dr. Ripley who, having the courage of his convictions, bravely suggested putting in practice the principles he and his Transcendental friends advocated in theory. “We talk well,” he said, in effect, “why not try to do the thing which we say?” And he did. With a few of these friends, like-minded, he went out to West Roxbury; six miles from Boston, and bought a farm of 200 acres. Being unusually bright folk, remarkably intelligent, highly educated and, as may be said, brilliantly enlightened, they succeeded, almost beyond belief, in making a woefully bad bargain. I do not know how much they paid for the land but whatever the price it was too high. The property was picturesque to look at but its best herbage was sheep-sorrel. Next the brook, which gave the name, Brook Farm, there was a fair bit of meadow, with a rounded hill called the Knoll rising sharply on the north. The land rolled unevenly on, one-eighth of a mile or so, to higher ground and then fell off again to a level plateau covered with pine woods, beyond which were two or three fields of plow-land. The soil was thin, sandy where it was not rocky, and rocky where it was not sandy. It was a poor place, indeed, and had been poorly farmed until it was as lean as Pharaoh’s second herd of kine. It speaks well for these unsophisticated philosophers that in four years they made this desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose; cultivating the finest market gardens and flower-gardens in Roxbury, planting orchards and vineyards, and growing pasturage for a profitable dairy.

If the amateur farmers were dismayed on finding what a hard row they had to hoe on this impoverished estate, they never complained, so far as I have heard, but resolutely set about the work they had to do. They came out to try a certain social experiment; an experiment in living a higher kind of life than that of their day and generation, resting on the faith that such a life can be lived here and now as well as heretofore in the legendary “Golden Age” of the past, or as hereafter in the “good time coming” of the future. The one purpose they entertained was to dwell together in unity “near to the heart of nature,” a phrase attributed to Margaret Fuller. All other considerations, whether of hardship, or bad beginnings or disappointments were but secondary if they could succeed in demonstrating the practicability of their high ideals.

Perhaps it is not a matter of much interest to the present generation but to us it has always seemed that these Brook Farmers deserve to be favorably remembered. They were not martyrs, being, on the contrary, an unusually joyous and happy company, but, all the same, they gave the best of their lives to the service of humanity. They honestly and earnestly believed they could demonstrate the practicability of their theories, to the advantage of their fellow-beings, and they faithfully tried to accomplish that purpose. If the Pilgrims of Plymouth deserve honor for unselfish devotion to religious reform, why should not the Brook Farm pioneers of social reform receive correspondingly suitable recognition. It is true they did not immediately attain the ends they sought but neither did the Pilgrims; and the end is not yet.

It should be said that not all the Transcendentalists joined Doctor Ripley in his Utopian undertaking. Ralph Waldo Emerson for example was not of our company. Indeed, he was not of any company. An inspiring preacher he gained early fame as a pulpit orator in the First Unitarian Church of Cambridge, Mass., but even the liberal communion of that free congregation was too close for his independent spirit, and he abandoned a career of brilliant promise in the ministry, as he said, “for his soul’s peace.” Sui generis, to be himself he must stand alone, and alone he stood during the remainder of his life.

A stanza of his poem, “The Problem” doubtless expresses something of his sentiments with regard to religious affiliation:

“I like a church, I like a cowl,
I love a prophet of the soul,
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles,
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowled churchman be.”

Of all the visitors coming to Brook Farm, I think Emerson was the most welcome. He was beloved by everyone from Dr. Ripley, dear friend and brother clergyman, to Abby Morton’s little ones. The messages of cheer and the words of wisdom he brought were received and treasured with intelligent appreciation. I have heard it said that Emerson was at his best when talking in monologue of an evening at the Hive, or in more formal discourse in the grove on Sunday. He was companionable and entered into the life of the place with evident enjoyment—happy but not jovial. He smiled readily and most charmingly, but never laughed. As a young man his personality was most attractive, serene loving-kindness illumining his comely countenance! My mother, also a serene spirit, thought his face the most beautiful she ever saw; and she was sure that laughter would be unseemly and disturbing.

Emerson liked to be with us at times, but never to be one of us. In the beginning Dr. Ripley wrote him a cordial invitation to join the association, the only invitation of the kind he ever gave, I believe. The invitation was declined in a note quoted by Rev. O. B. Frothingham in his admirable biography of Dr. Ripley, as follows:

“It is quite time that I made an answer to your proposition that I should venture into your new community. The design appears to me noble and generous, proceeding as I plainly see from nothing covert or selfish or ambitious but from a manly heart and mind. So it makes all men its friends and debtors. A matter to be entertained in a friendly spirit and examined as to what it has for us.

“I have decided not to join it, yet very slowly and I may almost say, with penitence. I am greatly relieved by learning that your coadjutors are now so many that you will no longer attach that importance to the defection of individuals which you hinted in your letter to me or others might possess—I mean the painful power of defeating the plan.”