How grand it would be if the social fabric could keep and guard all its weak ones, surround them by influences that could prevent them from falling into evil ways, and bear them up until the end comes peacefully and naturally!
Marianne Ripley, Mr. Ripley's sister, the devoted soul who reigned over the Kitchen Group and cultivated the flowers on the terraces, spent her later hours in the West, and passed away at Madison, Wisconsin. John Allen, the firm preacher, has gone also. His little boy, who conveyed the small-pox to the farm, grew to manhood, and at an early age fought with Grant at Vicksburg, where he received the wound that caused his death.
The dear girl with the loud laugh is still here, but tears and sorrow have been in her cup. Her kind husband, one of our number, and some children are with the shadows; and the dimpled face of the black-haired girl with the Irish name, whose beauty took my young fancy, long ago joined the larger realm of beauty.
The house dog, Carlo, whom everybody knew, grew rapidly old when the Association broke up. I never saw such a change. It seemed as though regretful remembrances of former times clung to him. There was no more the _music_ of "the sounding horn" to awaken him from his drowse, and he passed much of his time under the woodshed. But he was not the sleek and canny dog of yore. He grew thin and weak. Long locks of indifferent colored brown hair grew out of his sides, and hung loosely down. His gait was slow and feeble, and it was not pleasant to look at him. Finally, one cold day, at least a year after the general departure, he was missing, and I could find nothing of him. Inquiries were in vain. It was in the following spring that his bones were found where either he himself had dug a burrow, or the hand of charity had laid him. Good Carlo!
Some very happy marriages sprang from the acquaintance at Brook Farm. There, in a few weeks or months, a better knowledge could be formed, a truer and more absolute and certain estimate of character, than by years of fashionable flirtation. And here let me add, that the women were always well dressed: there were no party dresses, all shine, lace and glitter, and household wrappers all slouched, torn and drabbled. The situation of woman was such as to stimulate her ever to neatness in personal appearance, even if the material was but a "ninepenny" calico; and the same may be said to a marked extent of the men.