Next morning I awoke on a sofa in the upper hall, where I had stretched out, along toward midnight, for a moment’s rest. Althea had carefully taken off my shoes, and had covered me over with cloaks and shawls, without my knowing it. The swarm in the Hive had exemplified the poet’s idea of the tumultuous privacy of storm fairly well as to the tumult, but as to the privacy, that was what could be had in a house overcrowded with excited young folk. Frolic and fun were to the fore, and everybody bore the troubles of that tempestuous evening with high good humor; one weary, cross and fretful little chap being left out of the account. Left out he was, for sure. Always at Brook Farm, anyone not strictly in it, to use a phrase of later date, was absolutely out of it. One had to be aboard the train or find himself standing alone on the platform.
I was in better case after what had to serve as a morning toilet, as Mrs. Rykeman had promised to make up for a scanty supper by a treat of good hot brewis. Brewis was a new word and I was more than ready to test the merits of the unknown aliment, as, in my experience, anything commended as good to eat, was sure to prove palatable. The dining-room was occupied as a shake-down dormitory for women and girls, and breakfast was taken standing in the parlor or hall or anywhere places could be found outside of the kitchen where work was going on. When my bowl was handed me it was filled with the everlasting brown bread boiled in milk. That was brewis. I was just mad!
Wednesday and Thursday of that first week at Brook Farm were sad days indeed. I made a bad beginning! Shut up indoors by the most violent tempest of the year, I sulked in corners, alone in a crowd, the loneliest kind of solitude. The teachers did their best to keep classes going in the bedrooms, but, in the irregularity of the sessions, I was allowed to be absent without remark. Althea and some others tried to draw me into the continuous picnic performance going on all over the house only to learn there was nothing doing in brother’s retreat. At meal time the exasperating brown bread was invariably offered for my delectation, and that I regarded as a personal affront. Resorting to alliteration’s artful aid, it may be said I seemed bound to be bothered by Boston brown bread. I brooded morning, noon and night over the one idea that when my father came, I would beseech him to take me back home.