Persons of marked individuality--crooked sticks, as some of us might
be called--are not exactly the easiest to bind up into a fagot. But,
so long as our union should subsist, a man of intellect and feeling,
with a free nature in him, might have sought far and near without
finding so many points of attraction as would allure him hitherward.
We were of all creeds and opinions, and generally tolerant of all, on
every imaginable subject. Our bond, it seems to me, was not
affirmative, but negative. We had individually found one thing or
another to quarrel with in our past life, and were pretty well agreed
as to the inexpediency of lumbering along with the old system any
further. As to what should be substituted, there was much less
unanimity. We did not greatly care--at least, I never did--for the
written constitution under which our millennium had commenced. My
hope was, that, between theory and practice, a true and available
mode of life might be struck out; and that, even should we ultimately
fail, the months or years spent in the trial would not have been
wasted, either as regarded passing enjoyment, or the experience which
makes men wise.
Arcadians though we were, our costume bore no resemblance to the
beribboned doublets, silk breeches and stockings, and slippers
fastened with artificial roses, that distinguish the pastoral people
of poetry and the stage. In outward show, I humbly conceive, we
looked rather like a gang of beggars, or banditti, than either a
company of honest laboring-men, or a conclave of philosophers.
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