Mr. Jonas Gerrish, or familiarly, just plain Gerrish, was the United States Mail, the Express, the Freight Line and the rapid transit system for Brook Farm. He made two trips daily between the Hive and Scollay’s Square, covering the distance, six miles, in about an hour and a half, going out of his way to accommodate his patrons, as occasion required. We found Gerrish waiting at the depot when we arrived in Boston, half-an-hour late. He was a little impatient, as he said there was snow coming and he feared delay in getting back to the city. Gerrish was apt to be impatient, but that was all on the surface as he was really very kind-hearted and obliging. The snow began to fall before we were beyond the streets, and we reached our destination in the midst of a driving storm.

Father decided to return at once with Gerrish, having business in Boston which might go amiss if he should be storm-stayed in West Roxbury. His apprehensions were only too well founded, the Brook Farm community being snowbound in the Hive during the next three days. He hastily left us in charge of good Mrs. Rykeman, the house-mother at the Hive, promising to come out on Saturday for the week-end at the Farm—though I don’t know, come to think of it, that the weekend of our present day outings was known to us at that period.

Mrs. Rykeman had two forlorn, cold and tired children on her hands, one of whom at most was a very miserable youngster, indeed, far from mother and home and everything that makes life worth living. Our hostess took us to her own room and made us comfortable as she could, and, presently, as the bell rang for supper, conducted us to the dining-room. This was a long, bare room, containing ten or twelve square tables, also bare, save for the napkin, knife and spoon and bowl at each place. As we entered at one end of the room, a group of girls came in at the other end bringing pitchers of milk and piles of Boston brown bread. There was also Graham bread or, as we now call it, whole-wheat bread, and apple-sauce, but the meal consisted mainly of brown bread and milk. I then and there learned that the foreign milk was poor and thin because it was skimmed. The idea of putting skimmed milk on the table was unknown in the Old Colonie.

I could not or would not touch the abominable brown bread, and, while waiting for the girls to serve the eggs or chops or whatever there was for supper, passed the time in trying to make out the meaning of the chatter and laughter that filled the room with merriment. There seemed to be a gleam of sense discoverable now and then, but, on the whole, it was impossible to catch the significance of the rapid-fire talk volleying from table to table. Indeed, it was always difficult for a stranger to swing into the current of general conversation at Brook Farm. The bright young enthusiasts there were all of one mind, in a way; in close sympathy and quick to understand each other. A word, a look, a gesture expressed a thought. An allusion, a memory, an apt quotation suggested an idea which was clearly apprehended by ready listeners; and a flash of wit was instantly followed by a peal of mirth, echoed to the limit.

It goes without saying that these reflections were not in my young noddle at the moment, but being of later date, are the findings of longer observation. I must have been in a sort of maze, wondering at the fun going on which I could see and hear but could not comprehend, and wondering too when supper was coming. I was about to ask Mrs. Rykeman how long we would have to wait, when, whiz! the whole business of the meal was over and done with. Everybody sprang up at once, and away they all flew like a flock of birds, leaving an astonished little boy looking for something to eat.

Althea took flight with the others, presently returning to look after her forlorn brother, but, finding I had been taken to the kitchen for something that might at least alleviate the pangs of hunger, she rejoined the girls in the parlor, where there was already a dance under way. Althea was a bright-spirited girl, vivacious, alert, appreciative and companionable. She forthwith took her place in the Brook Farm community with the best grace. She readily made friends with Abby Ford and her sister, with Annie and Mary Page, with the Barlow brothers and with the Spanish students of about her own age. Of these latter, Ramon Cita or Little Raymond became subsequently her particular cavalier. Ramon was the youngest and smallest of the Spaniards, besides being the best looking according to our standards, and a very charming little gentleman he was, too. There were eight of these boys and young men, and they were all courteous and polite to a degree that we American youngsters could admire, but to which we could hardly attain. They must have been members of distinguished families, as they more than once received visits from high officials of the Spanish legation in Washington.

It may as well be said here that these students were sent from Manila to prepare for Harvard in Dr. Ripley’s school in Boston; a school which was of the first repute in the early forties. The Doctor transferred it with several of the teachers to West Roxbury, where it became the nucleus of the Brook Farm school. The Ford girls, with their aunt, Miss Russell, the Barlow boys and their mother, and the Manila youths were, I believe, among those migrating from the Boston school.

We all liked the young Spaniards very much, and I have ever since liked the people of their nationality I have met at home and abroad. They can teach us good manners every day in the week; but they have one peculiarity that must strike the average American as certainly rather strange. This is their common and familiar use of words and names which we regard as sacred and hardly to be spoken outside of the meeting-house. As an example, it may be allowable, at this late day to mention without giving family names, that one of our students was baptized Jesus Mary, and another by the same rite was designated Joseph Holy Spirit.

Before bedtime the snowstorm had risen to the height of a terrific tempest, the heaviest and hardest of the winter, and what the New England winter can do when it tries can only be known by experience, as no description can convey any adequate idea of the fierce blasts, the drive of hard-frozen snow and the terrible cold forced straight through clothes and flesh and bones by the piercing spears and pounding hammers of the Northeast gale fiends. Three days and three nights the raiding powers of the arctics raged about us and blockaded all but the hardiest and strongest of us in the close quarters of the Hive. To venture out of the house was to risk life and limb. No one was allowed to run such risks alone, as, in case of a fall, the chances would be against getting up again without help, but parties of twos and threes of the young men went to the barns to look after the cattle or up to the Eyrie, the Cottage and Pilgrim Hall to see that all was right and to bring down a sled-load of bedding for the shut-ins. In their services, the vegetarians matched themselves against the “cannibals” as they disdainfully called those who were still in bonds to the flesh-pots of Egypt, but I do not believe there was beef enough eaten on the place to warrant any comparisons being made, and, at any rate, they all came out alike, pretty much exhausted.

Next morning I awoke on a sofa in the upper hall, where I had stretched out, along toward midnight, for a moment’s rest. Althea had carefully taken off my shoes, and had covered me over with cloaks and shawls, without my knowing it. The swarm in the Hive had exemplified the poet’s idea of the tumultuous privacy of storm fairly well as to the tumult, but as to the privacy, that was what could be had in a house overcrowded with excited young folk. Frolic and fun were to the fore, and everybody bore the troubles of that tempestuous evening with high good humor; one weary, cross and fretful little chap being left out of the account. Left out he was, for sure. Always at Brook Farm, anyone not strictly in it, to use a phrase of later date, was absolutely out of it. One had to be aboard the train or find himself standing alone on the platform.

I was in better case after what had to serve as a morning toilet, as Mrs. Rykeman had promised to make up for a scanty supper by a treat of good hot brewis. Brewis was a new word and I was more than ready to test the merits of the unknown aliment, as, in my experience, anything commended as good to eat, was sure to prove palatable. The dining-room was occupied as a shake-down dormitory for women and girls, and breakfast was taken standing in the parlor or hall or anywhere places could be found outside of the kitchen where work was going on. When my bowl was handed me it was filled with the everlasting brown bread boiled in milk. That was brewis. I was just mad!

Wednesday and Thursday of that first week at Brook Farm were sad days indeed. I made a bad beginning! Shut up indoors by the most violent tempest of the year, I sulked in corners, alone in a crowd, the loneliest kind of solitude. The teachers did their best to keep classes going in the bedrooms, but, in the irregularity of the sessions, I was allowed to be absent without remark. Althea and some others tried to draw me into the continuous picnic performance going on all over the house only to learn there was nothing doing in brother’s retreat. At meal time the exasperating brown bread was invariably offered for my delectation, and that I regarded as a personal affront. Resorting to alliteration’s artful aid, it may be said I seemed bound to be bothered by Boston brown bread. I brooded morning, noon and night over the one idea that when my father came, I would beseech him to take me back home.

It appeared, later, that I was not being altogether neglected by the authorities during this trying period, as they had kept their eyes on the new boy and were seriously considering this same idea, thinking it would perhaps be better to advise his father to take him away. The dour youker was plainly enough so unhappily out of place that they were inclined not to try to keep him. Truly, a bad beginning!

This was not a decision adopted to meet the special case in hand, but rather an unwritten rule of the community. Brook Farm was a solidarity, a company united to put in practice certain principles and to accomplish certain results, and only those were wanted who could enter into the spirit of the movement and aid in carrying on the great work. Those who did not help, hindered, and to hinder the task of reforming society could not be permitted. As with the community, so also with the school. The school was an independent organization, but it was likewise an experimental organization, being, practically, a first attempt to inaugurate industrial education, and only pupils suited for such an education were wanted. It was not a place for the feeble-minded, the deficient or the intractable, but for bright children capable of responding to instruction directed to certain ends. The teachers, earnestly devoted to these selected courses of instruction, could not afford to give time and attention to incompetents.

These matters are worth mentioning for the reason that Brook Farm in general and Dr. Ripley in particular have been censured for refusing to accept members of the community and pupils of the school not suited to the forwarding of undertakings held as almost sacred. This exclusiveness was neither hard-hearted nor uncharitable, but was simply necessary under the circumstances. To charge Brook Farm with being heathenish and unchristian on this account, as certain Puritan critics have done, is as unjust as it would be to blame Luther Burbank for discarding a thousand plants to cultivate the one growth giving promise of answering his purpose. For any experiment the careful selection of material is not only proper but indispensable.

On Friday the storm abated and things began to mend all around as the sides cleared. In the afternoon Dr. Ripley and Charles Hosmer made their way home from Boston, hailed with rejoicings by everyone except Master Grumpus, who should have been more than thankful for their timely arrival, had he only known it. Saturday morning regular lessons were resumed in the classroom, but I held aloof in out-of-the-way coverts; one hiding place being the cow-stable. Here Charles Hosmer happened to find me, just incidentally, as it seemed, but really by kindly design no doubt, and gave me a hearty greeting which I couldn’t be so churlish as not to return.

“Are you the boy who came from Albany?” he asked.

“From the Old Colonie, in Albany,” I replied.

“I suppose,” he continued, “you have not yet been assigned to your classes?”

I accepted this account of what was in fact absence without leave, and he then suggested that if I had nothing else on hand I might help him in making a toboggan-slide. Never having heard of such a thing I accepted the invitation. Securing a couple of shovels we cleared a path to the knoll; and, on the way, Mr. Hosmer explained that Angus Cameron, another new pupil, hailing from Canada, had brought to the school a toboggan, a kind of sled, and we were to make a smooth path or slide for it, so the boys and girls could try it in the afternoon when there were no lessons.

We went to work with a will, spanking the snow down with the shovels, leveling uneven places and forming a clear, hard track from the top of the Knoll to the brook. On the edge of the bank we piled up an inclined plane, wetting down the snow and building a mound perhaps five feet high. From this elevation, Mr. Hosmer stated, the toboggan, flying down the slide, would shoot upward and forward and land on the far side of the brook. That seemed to me a very desirable thing to do, and, while I finished up the shovel-work, my companion went back to the Hive and brought out the toboggan.

This conveniency, well enough known to-day, was new to us, and we did not quite know how to manage it. However, we got onto the thing somehow, and away we went down the slide. The slide was all right and the inclined plane was all right, so we made the descent and the ascent all right, soaring over the brook like a bird, but the landing on the far side was all wrong. We hit the snowbank like a battering ram, the snow piling up in front of us as hard as stone; the shock was terrific! Mr. Hosmer got the worst of it as he catapulted into the drift, while I alighted in a heap on his shoulders. He scrambled out of the drift on all fours, concerned only with learning whether I was badly hurt. On my assurance that unless his back and legs and arms were broken, there was no damage done, he straightened up and declared he was unhurt but dreadfully humiliated. “How could a man be such a condemned idiot as to plunge head-first against a barricade like that?” This was the question suggested to his mind, only he did not say “condemned idiot” exactly, but he apologized for the emphatic words he did use, and as they do not look well in print, they need not be repeated.

Despite his bluff I saw he was in pain and wanted him to return to the Hive, but he insisted on finishing our job. Under his direction I wallowed through the snowdrift, back and forth, trampling down a passage, and then pressed the snow hard and flat, using the toboggan like a plank. Meanwhile Mr. Hosmer bad turned very white and now dropped onto the toboggan, limp and sick. The shock had upset his digestion. How to get him home? Borrowing rails from the roadside fence I laid them across the streak of open water in the middle of the brook, piled snow over them, and dragged my patient across on the toboggan. I attempted to haul him up the Knoll, but he protested, asserting that he was much better and fully able to walk. He managed to crawl up the hill and left me with directions to find Angus Cameron and join him in taking charge of the slide in the afternoon.

After making half-a-dozen or more flying leaps over the brook on the new conveyance, with as many jolts and tumbles in the snow, I managed to get the hang of the thing, and could steer it over the course with delightful ease, suggesting the flight of a bird.