"I remember little else but a grave eating of russet apples by the erect
philosophers, and a solemn disappearance into night. The club struggled
through three Monday evenings. Alcott was perpetually putting apples of
gold in pictures of silver; for such was the rich ore of his thoughts
coined by the deep melody of his voice. Thoreau charmed us with the
secrets won from his interviews with Pan in the Walden woods; while
Emerson, with the zeal of an engineer trying to dam wild waters, sought to
bind the wide-flying embroidery of discourse into a whole of clear, sweet
sense. But still in vain. The oracular sayings were the unalloyed
saccharine element; and every chemist knows how much else goes to
practical food--how much coarse, rough, woody fibre is essential. The club
struggled on valiantly, discoursing celestially, eating apples, and
disappearing in the dark, until the third evening it vanished altogether.
But I have since known clubs of fifty times the number, whose collected
genius was not more than that of either of the Dii Majores of our Concord
coterie. The fault was its too great concentration. It was not relaxation,
as a club should be, but tension. Society is a play, a game, a tournament;
not a battle. It is the easy grace of undress; not an intellectual,
full-dress parade."


VII

As will have been seen, Curtis never lost his interest in Brook Farm or
his faith in the principles on which it was founded. In his letters to
Dwight he clearly pointed out its defects, and he indicated in an
emphatic manner that he could not accept some of its methods. He showed
that he was an individualist rather than an associationist or socialist,
that his supreme faith was in individual effort, and in each person making