University of Virginia Library

3. III.
A KNOT OF DREAMERS.

Zenobia bade us welcome, in a fine, frank, mellow
voice, and gave each of us her hand, which was very
soft and warm. She had something appropriate, I recollect,
to say to every individual; and what she said to
myself was this:

“I have long wished to know you, Mr. Coverdale, and
to thank you for your beautiful poetry, some of which I
have learned by heart; or, rather, it has stolen into my
memory, without my exercising any choice or volition
about the matter. Of course — permit me to say — you
do not think of relinquishing an occupation in which
you have done yourself so much credit. I would almost
rather give you up as an associate, than that the world
should lose one of its true poets!”

“Ah, no; there will not be the slightest danger of
that, especially after this inestimable praise from Zenobia,”
said I, smiling, and blushing, no doubt, with excess
of pleasure. “I hope, on the contrary, now to produce
something that shall really deserve to be called poetry,
— true, strong, natural, and sweet, as is the life which
we are going to lead, — something that shall have the
notes of wild birds twittering through it, or a strain like
the wind-anthems in the woods, as the case may be.”

“Is it irksome to you to hear your own verses sung?”
asked Zenobia, with a gracious smile. “If so, I am

very sorry, for you will certainly hear me singing them,
sometimes, in the summer evenings.”

“Of all things,” answered I, “that is what will delight
me most.”

While this passed, and while she spoke to my companions,
I was taking note of Zenobia's aspect; and it
impressed itself on me so distinctly, that I can now summon
her up, like a ghost, a little wanner than the life,
but otherwise identical with it. She was dressed as
simply as possible, in an American print (I think the
dry goods people call it so), but with a silken kerchief,
between which and her gown there was one glimpse of
a white shoulder. It struck me as a great piece of good
fortune that there should be just that glimpse. Her hair,
which was dark, glossy, and of singular abundance, was
put up rather soberly and primly, without curls, or other
ornament, except a single flower. It was an exotic, of
rare beauty, and as fresh as if the hot-house gardener
had just clipt it from the stem. That flower has struck
deep root into my memory. I can both see it and smell
it, at this moment. So brilliant, so rare, so costly, as it
must have been, and yet enduring only for a day, it was
more indicative of the pride and pomp which had a luxuriant
growth in Zenobia's character than if a great
diamond had sparkled among her hair.

Her hand, though very soft, was larger than most women
would like to have, or than they could afford to have,
though not a whit too large in proportion with the spacious
plan of Zenobia's entire development. It did one
good to see a fine intellect (as hers really was, although
its natural tendency lay in another direction than
towards literature) so fitly cased. She was, indeed, an

admirable figure of a woman, just on the hither verge
of her richest maturity, with a combination of features
which it is safe to call remarkably beautiful, even if some
fastidious persons might pronounce them a little deficient
in softness and delicacy. But we find enough of
those attributes everywhere. Preferable — by way of
variety, at least — was Zenobia's bloom, health, and
vigor, which she possessed in such overflow that a man
might well have fallen in love with her for their sake
only. In her quiet moods, she seemed rather indolent;
but when really in earnest, particularly if there were a
spice of bitter feeling, she grew all alive, to her finger-tips.

“I am the first comer,” Zenobia went on to say, while
her smile beamed warmth upon us all; “so I take the
part of hostess, for to-day, and welcome you as if to my
own fireside. You shall be my guests, too, at supper.
To-morrow, if you please, we will be brethren and sisters,
and begin our new life from daybreak.”

“Have we our various parts assigned?” asked some
one.

“O, we of the softer sex,” responded Zenobia, with
her mellow, almost broad laugh, — most delectable to
hear, but not in the least like an ordinary woman's
laugh, — “we women (there are four of us here already)
will take the domestic and indoor part of the business, as
a matter of course. To bake, to boil, to roast, to fry, to
stew, — to wash, and iron, and scrub, and sweep, — and,
at our idler intervals, to repose ourselves on knitting and
sewing, — these, I suppose, must be feminine occupations,
for the present. By and by, perhaps, when our
individual adaptations begin to develop themselves, it

may be that some of us who wear the petticoat will go
a-field, and leave the weaker brethren to take our places
in the kitchen.”

“What a pity,” I remarked, “that the kitchen, and
the house-work generally, cannot be left out of our system
altogether! It is odd enough that the kind of
labor which falls to the lot of women is just that which
chiefly distinguishes artificial life — the life of degenerated
mortals — from the life of Paradise. Eve had no
dinner-pot, and no clothes to mend, and no washing-day.”

“I am afraid,” said Zenobia, with mirth gleaming out
of her eyes, “we shall find some difficulty in adopting
the Paradisiacal system for at least a month to come.
Look at that snow-drift sweeping past the window!
Are there any figs ripe, do you think? Have the pine-apples
been gathered, to-day? Would you like a breadfruit,
or a cocoa-nut? Shall I run out and pluck you
some roses? No, no, Mr. Coverdale; the only flower
hereabouts is the one in my hair, which I got out of a
green-house this morning. As for the garb of Eden,”
added she, shivering playfully, “I shall not assume it
till after May-day!”

Assuredly, Zenobia could not have intended it; — the
fault must have been entirely in my imagination. But
these last words, together with something in her manner,
irresistibly brought up a picture of that fine, perfectly
developed figure, in Eve's earliest garment. Her
free, careless, generous modes of expression, often had
this effect, of creating images, which, though pure, are
hardly felt to be quite decorous when born of a thought
that passes between man and woman. I imputed it, at

that time, to Zenobia's noble courage, conscious of no
harm, and scorning the petty restraints which take the
life and color out of other women's conversation. There
was another peculiarity about her. We seldom meet
with women, now-a-days, and in this country, who
impress us as being women at all; — their sex fades
away, and goes for nothing, in ordinary intercourse.
Not so with Zenobia. One felt an influence breathing
out of her such as we might suppose to come from Eve,
when she was just made, and her Creator brought her
to Adam, saying, “Behold! here is a woman!” Not
that I would convey the idea of especial gentleness,
grace, modesty and shyness, but of a certain warm and
rich characteristic, which seems, for the most part, to
have been refined away out of the feminine system.

“And now,” continued Zenobia, “I must go and help
get supper. Do you think you can be content, instead
of figs, pine-apples, and all the other delicacies of Adam's
supper-table, with tea and toast, and a certain modest
supply of ham and tongue, which, with the instinct of a
housewife, I brought hither in a basket? And there
shall be bread and milk, too, if the innocence of your
taste demands it.”

The whole sisterhood now went about their domestic
avocations, utterly declining our offers to assist, further
than by bringing wood, for the kitchen-fire, from a huge
pile in the back yard. After heaping up more than a
sufficient quantity, we returned to the sitting-room, drew
our chairs close to the hearth, and began to talk over
our prospects. Soon, with a tremendous stamping in
the entry, appeared Silas Foster, lank, stalwart, uncouth,
and grisly-bearded. He came from foddering the cattle

in the barn, and from the field, where he had been
ploughing, until the depth of the snow rendered it impossible
to draw a furrow. He greeted us in pretty
much the same tone as if he were speaking to his oxen,
took a quid from his iron tobacco-box, pulled off his wet
cow-hide boots, and sat down before the fire in his
stocking-feet. The steam arose from his soaked garments,
so that the stout yeoman looked vaporous and
spectre-like.

“Well, folks,” remarked Silas, “you 'll be wishing
yourselves back to town again, if this weather holds.”

And, true enough, there was a look of gloom, as the
twilight fell silently and sadly out of the sky, its gray
or sable flakes intermingling themselves with the fast
descending snow. The storm, in its evening aspect,
was decidedly dreary. It seemed to have arisen for our
especial behoof, — a symbol of the cold, desolate, distrustful
phantoms that invariably haunt the mind, on the
eve of adventurous enterprises, to warn us back within
the boundaries of ordinary life.

But our courage did not quail. We would not allow
ourselves to be depressed by the snow-drift trailing past
the window, any more than if it had been the sigh of a
summer wind among rustling boughs. There have been
few brighter seasons for us than that. If ever men
might lawfully dream awake, and give utterance to their
wildest visions without dread of laughter or scorn on
the part of the audience, — yes, and speak of earthly
happiness, for themselves and mankind, as an object to
be hopefully striven for, and probably attained, — we,
who made that little semi-circle round the blazing fire,
were those very men. We had left the rusty iron

frame-work of society behind us; we had broken through
many hindrances that are powerful enough to keep most
people on the weary tread-mill of the established system,
even while they feel its irksomeness almost as intolerable
as we did. We had stept down from the pulpit; we
had flung aside the pen; we had shut up the ledger; we
had thrown off that sweet, bewitching, enervating indolence,
which is better, after all, than most of the enjoyments
within mortal grasp. It was our purpose — a
generous one, certainly, and absurd, no doubt, in full
proportion with its generosity — to give up whatever we
had heretofore attained, for the sake of showing mankind
the example of a life governed by other than the false
and cruel principles on which human society has all
along been based.

And, first of all, we had divorced ourselves from
pride, and were striving to supply its place with familiar
love. We meant to lessen the laboring man's great
burthen of toil, by performing our due share of it at the
cost of our own thews and sinews. We sought our
profit by mutual aid, instead of wresting it by the
strong hand from an enemy, or filching it craftily
from those less shrewd than ourselves (if, indeed, there
were any such in New England), or winning it by selfish
competition with a neighbor; in one or another of
which fashions every son of woman both perpetrates and
suffers his share of the common evil, whether he chooses
it or no. And, as the basis of our institution, we purposed
to offer up the earnest toil of our bodies, as a
prayer no less than an effort for the advancement of our
race.

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 have n't team
enough for that and the regular farm-work, reckoning
three of you 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. But, to own the truth, I very
soon became sensible that, as regarded society at large,
we stood in a position of new hostility, rather than new
brotherhood. Nor could this fail to be the case, in some
degree, until the bigger and better half of society should
range itself on our side. Constituting so pitiful a
minority as now, we were inevitably estranged from the
rest of mankind in pretty fair proportion with the strictness
of our mutual bond among ourselves.

This dawning idea, however, was driven back into
my inner consciousness by the entrance of Zenobia.
She came with the welcome intelligence that supper
was on the table. Looking at herself in the glass, and
perceiving that her one magnificent flower had grown
rather languid (probably by being exposed to the fervency
of the kitchen fire), she flung it on the floor, as
unconcernedly as a village girl would throw away a
faded violet. The action seemed proper to her character,
although, methought, it would still more have befitted
the bounteous nature of this beautiful woman to scatter
fresh flowers from her hand, and to revive faded ones by
her touch. Nevertheless, it was a singular but irresistible
effect; the presence of Zenobia caused our heroic
enterprise to show like an illusion, a masquerade, a
pastoral, a counterfeit Arcadia, in which we grown-up
men and women were making a play-day of the years
that were given us to live in. I tried to analyze this
impression, but not with much success.

“It really vexes me,” observed Zenobia, as we left the
room, “that Mr. Hollingsworth should be such a laggard.
I should not have thought him at all the sort of person
to be turned back by a puff of contrary wind, or a few
snow-flakes drifting into his face.”

“Do you know Hollingsworth personally?” I inquired.

“No; only as an auditor — auditress, I mean — of
some of his lectures,” said she. “What a voice he
has! and what a man he is! Yet not so much an
intellectual man, I should say, as a great heart; at
least, he moved me more deeply than I think myself
capable of being moved, except by the stroke of a true,
strong heart against my own. It is a sad pity that he
should have devoted his glorious powers to such a
grimy, unbeautiful and positively hopeless object as
this reformation of criminals, about which he makes
himself and his wretchedly small audiences so very
miserable. To tell you a secret, I never could tolerate
a philanthropist before. Could you?”

“By no means,” I answered; “neither can I now.”

“They are, indeed, an odiously disagreeable set of
mortals,” continued Zenobia. “I should like Mr. Hollingsworth
a great deal better, if the philanthropy had
been left out. At all events, as a mere matter of taste,
I wish he would let the bad people alone, and try to
benefit those who are not already past his help. Do
you suppose he will be content to spend his life, or even
a few months of it, among tolerably virtuous and comfortable
individuals, like ourselves?”

“Upon my word, I doubt it,” said I. “If we wish to
keep him with us, we must systematically commit, at
least, one crime apiece! Mere peccadilloes will not satisfy
him.”

Zenobia turned, sidelong, a strange kind of a glance
upon me; but, before I could make out what it meant,
we had entered the kitchen, where, in accordance with
the rustic simplicity of our new life, the supper-table
was spread.