Therefore, if we built splendid castles (phalansteries perhaps they
might be more fitly called), and pictured beautiful scenes, among the
fervid coals of the hearth around which we were clustering, and if
all went to rack with the crumbling embers and have never since
arisen out of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame. In my
own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world's
improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men
seldom fall twice in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and higher is
the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error.
Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our conversation; but when he
did speak, it was very much to some practical purpose. For instance:--
"Which man among you," quoth he, "is the best judge of swine? Some
of us must go to the next Brighton fair, and buy half a dozen pigs."
Pigs! Good heavens! had we come out from among the swinish multitude
for this? And again, in reference to some discussion about raising
early vegetables for the market:--"We shall never make any hand at
market gardening," said Silas Foster, "unless the women folks will
undertake to do all the weeding. We haven't team enough for that and
the regular farm-work, reckoning three of your city folks as worth
one common field-hand. No, no; I tell you, we should have to get up
a little too early in the morning, to compete with the market
gardeners round Boston."
It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first questions raised,
after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world,
should relate to the possibility of getting the advantage over the
outside barbarians in their own field of labor.
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