Thus the summer was passing away,--a summer of toil, of interest, of
something that was not pleasure, but which went deep into my heart, and
there became a rich experience. I found myself looking forward to
years, if not to a lifetime, to be spent on the same system. The
Community were now beginning to form their permanent plans. One of our
purposes was to erect a Phalanstery (as I think we called it, after
Fourier; but the phraseology of those days is not very fresh in my
remembrance), where the great and general family should have its
abiding-place. Individual members, too, who made it a point of
religion to preserve the sanctity of an exclusive home, were selecting
sites for their cottages, by the wood-side, or on the breezy swells, or
in the sheltered nook of some little valley, according as their taste
might lean towards snugness or the picturesque.
Altogether, by projecting our minds outward, we had imparted a show of novelty to
existence, and contemplated it as hopefully as if the soil beneath our
feet had not been fathom-deep with the dust of deluded generations, on
every one of which, as on ourselves, the world had imposed itself as a
hitherto unwedded bride.
Hollingsworth and myself had often discussed these prospects. It was
easy to perceive, however, that he spoke with little or no fervor, but
either as questioning the fulfilment of our anticipations, or, at any
rate, with a quiet consciousness that it was no personal concern of
his. Shortly after the scene at Eliot's pulpit, while he and I were
repairing an old stone fence, I amused myself with sallying forward
into the future time.
"When we come to be old men," I said, "they will call us uncles, or
fathers,--Father Hollingsworth and Uncle Coverdale,--and we will look
back cheerfully to these early days, and make a romantic story for the
young People (and if a little more romantic than truth may warrant, it
will be no harm) out of our severe trials and hardships. In a century
or two, we shall, every one of us, be mythical personages, or
exceedingly picturesque and poetical ones, at all events. They will
have a great public hall, in which your portrait, and mine, and twenty
other faces that are living now, shall be hung up; and as for me, I
will be painted in my shirtsleeves, and with the sleeves rolled up, to
show my muscular development.
What stories will be rife among them
about our mighty strength!" continued I, lifting a big stone and
putting it into its place, "though our posterity will really be far
stronger than ourselves, after several generations of a simple,
natural, and active life. What legends of Zenobia's beauty, and
Priscilla's slender and shadowy grace, and those mysterious qualities
which make her seem diaphanous with spiritual light! In due course of
ages, we must all figure heroically in an epic poem; and we will
ourselves--at least, I will--bend unseen over the future poet, and lend
him inspiration while he writes it."