CHAPTER VIII

FRUITLANDS

WHAT influenced Isaac Hecker to leave Brook Farm, a place so
congenial in many ways to his natural dispositions, was, plainly
enough, his tendency to seek a more ascetic and interior life than he
could lead there. The step cost him much, but he had received all
that the place and his companions could give him, and his departure
was inevitable.

His next move in pursuit if his ideal took him to Fruitlands. This
was a farm, situated near Harvard, in Worcester Co., Massachusetts,
which had been bought by Mr. Charles Lane, an English admirer of Amos
Bronson Alcott, with the hope of establishing on it a new community
in consonance with the views and wishes of the latter. Perhaps
Fruitlands could never, at any stage of its existence as a corporate
home for Mr. Alcott's family and his scanty following of disciples,
have been truly described as in running order, but when Isaac Hecker
went there, on July 11, 1843, it was still in its incipiency. He had
paid the Fruitlanders a brief visit toward the end of June, and
thought that he saw in them evidences of "a deeper life." It speaks
volumes for his native sagacity and keen eye for realities, that less
than a fortnight's residence with Mr. Alcott should have sufficed to
dispel this illusion.

Bronson Alcott seems to have been by nature what the French call a
_poseur;_ or, as one of his own not unkindly intimates has described
him, "an innocent charlatan." Although not altogether empty, he was
vain; full of talk which had what was most often a false air of