Mr. & Mrs. Field, Rosa, Dr. Neidhard & myself were the party. Dr. Neidhard is an unusually sensible, reliable, good-hearted, stout, heavy, common-looking, democratic, socialistic, Christianic, German Homeopathic physician, standing high in this profession & having a profitable practice in Philadelphia. Had seen your letters in Bulletin—not your book. Was sorry not to see you & would be glad to do so when convenient to you.

The Navesink Highlands are a narrow range of hills extending down the shore but little further than we went with Benny. Then along their southern base comes the Shrewsbury or Neversink River, embouching into the inlet opposite the ocean house a few miles below our peach-harbor. Going up this 7 miles or so to Redbank—a very beautiful country. The south shore Battish & rather marshy. North, hilly with beautiful slopes to the shore—on which are woods, orchards & cultivated fields—very charmingly mingled. Finer than Staten Island.

From Redbank we start for the Phalanx by a diligence. Country very pretty—sandy & sterile but by marl & capital culture bearing fine crops. Hilly, well wooded & watered. Further you go less pretty—more half cleared land, less diversity of surface &c.

About ten miles—you come to the domain—no indication of approach—woody country—large old brown mill—water & steam power, saw & grist &c.. Enter a farm gate & by a good road through pretty wild wood 50 to 100 rods to the phalanstery. No grounds—an old barrack attached to a little old Dutch cottage, & back of this a few rods, a rather fine neat large, brown colored, wood, hotel looking building.

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We land on the piazza of it & enter a cold reception room. Plain, matted floor—engraving, head of Fourier & Swedenborg & plaster angel & a vase or two. Visitors’ register on table. Nobody in sight for some time & we waiting.

I am looking out of window & see from the aforesaid barrack a human being approaching. It is Horace Greeley in a Bloomer. The same high expansive noble benevolent forehead & eye—rather withered in the sensual. The same floxy hair—& a devil may care air about looks & a take it easy carriage & expression. She is between 30 & 50 & looks healthy & good spite of the outrageous oddity.

She comes & salutes us mildly. Tells us most of Field’s acquaintances are not here. (Spring for one, for your luck.) But others are brought, dinner ordered, & Mrs. Arnold, as good a specimen of the best sort of New England little oldish woman as I ever saw. Mild, loving, earnest, simple, thin, and monstrously over—worked. She is our hostess & we are made guests—dine, and Field & I, with a young pair of Arnolds, look over the crops, the marl pit &c.

There are about 100 members & 50 visitors, children, & probationers. No one can join until after a year’s probation he or she is accepted by a majority vote. Visitors pay cost (same as members for dishes at table & $2 a week for profit & 37 ¢ for rent. So it costs as a mere boarding-house $3 to 5 a week.)

The attention of the community has thus far been evidently given to merely financial success. They have evidently worked hard & constantly. And though from inexperience they made a good many errors at first and have had a great many peculiar difficulties, they have succeeded in making it pay. A great success. They have done little but in agriculture to make money by. And when you consider how hard it is to live by agriculture in general, you will acknowledge they have shown a great advantage in the co-operative principle as applied to it.

They have, as I intimated, neglected anything else almost in the endeavor to make money. There has been little thought of beauty or moral or mental advancement. Education of the young has been forgotten in a great measure. There is surprisingly little [concern] for appearances. They all talk and act naturally, simply and unaffectedly. Evidently care little, too little, about the world outside. Pay but little attention to visitors and greatly love one-another.

They generally are very strongly attached to the Phalanx, feel confident that it is the right way to live. Have enjoyed it & succeeded in their purposes in it much better than they had expected to. “I wouldn’t leave for worlds.” “Couldn’t live any other way.” “It is heaven compared with the life I had before,” &c., we heard from different individuals.

It is considered a great privilege to be permitted to join them and [377]they reject a great many. I can not tell what sort of people they were. Mostly New Englanders I should think—of various classes—the majority working people. Few or none independently wealthy. Whether any considerable number were actually mere laborers living from hand to mouth, uneducated and uncouth, I could not be satisfied. Some of the later ones were. Many of the old ones might have been and if so have been a good deal refined and civilized by the associative life.

If we compare their situation with that of an average of the agricultural class-laborers & all-even in the best of New England, it is a most blessed advance. They are better in nearly all respects. And I don’t see why, if such associations were common, and our “lowest class” (I mean poorest & least comfortable and least in the way of improvement moral & mental) of laborers could be drawn of their own will into it, they should not be in the same way advanced in every way. Put a common-place man (if a commonplace man would choose to be so put) of our poorest Agricultural or Manufacturing laboring class into such circumstances, and it looks to me every way probable that he would be greatly elevated—be made a new man in a few years.

On the other hand, take the average of our people of all classes, including the wealthy and gay fashionable—including our merchants & shop—keepers & lawyers & ministers—and I think on the whole the influence of the system, if they would keep to it, would be favorable. They would live more sensibly, be happier & better.

If you take our most intelligent religious & cultivated sensible people, I think it would depend on individual character, on individual tastes. I half think (though my taste would say otherwise) it would be better for me. For you & J.H.O. & Field it would require a change, a good deal of a struggle, to come handsomely and profitably into it.

The long & short of it is I am more of a Fourierist than before I visited the Experiment. The conglomeration of families even works better than I was willing to believe. Nevertheless I am not a Fourierist for myself: but for many, a large part of even an American community (people) I am. It wouldn’t suit me—certainly not Field or J.H.O. But I think it would the majority. An Associationist—a Socialist—I very decidedly more am than I was before I went to the Phalanx. The advantages of cooperation of labor are manifestly great. The saving of labor immense. The cheapening of food, rent, &c., very great. It would make starvation, abundance. The advantages by making knowledge, intellectual & moral culture, and esthetic culture more easy—popular—that is, the advantages by democratizing religion, refinement & information, I am inclined to think might be equally great among the associated. They are not at the N.A. Phalanx & yet are manifest among some.

Those who came there refined, religious, (moral at least) & highly [378]intelligent may have suffered. I saw no evidence that I know that they had, but I should have thought they would. Because they have given themselves up to too narrow ranges of thought—have worked too hard to make the association succeed—or, if you please, too hard for the benefit of others.

It is not, by any means, yet a well-organized & arranged establishment. They are constantly improving—seeing errors and returning to do up matters which in the haste of a struggle to get started were overlooked. Yet they see an immense deal to be attended and better arranged when they get time. Nor are they very intelligent people or very refined and genteel and of high ideals—any of them. There are lots of conveniences they might have—that would be necessary to the comfort of some wealthy people, even for you & I prospectively; that they know nothing about &, of course, care nothing about. They are not any of them first class people, or if so they have forgotten some of their 5th Avenue notions. I mean silver-forks & such like—(napkins.)

One great thing they have succeeded in perfectly. In making labor, honorable. Mere physical labor they too much elevated, I think, but at any rate the “lowest” & most menial & disagreeable duties of civilized community are made really reputable & honorable. A man who spent a large part of his time in smoking & reading newspapers & talking and recreative employments only would feel ashamed of himself, would feel small & consider it a privilege to be allowed to black boots & sweep and milk for a part of the time.

It is in this way it would do me good to go there. No, not in making labor honorable, but in making idleness disagreeable & labor of all sorts (moderately) agreeable—in removing much that is disagreeable. Thus I should hoe corn very comfortably, if I had you in the next row to talk to about the Shuss cogsslocken del Espelntatzellin, and should black my own shoes & yours too if you paid me for it, if all that I needed to do was to toss them into a hopper and turn the stop-cock and let on the steam.

The whole of work of the community is apportioned to different groups. Rather, first to series; as the “Agricultural Series,” the “Domestic Series,” “Live Stock Series,” &c, & the series into groups. Thus, the Agricultural into the market garden, orchard, experimental, marling, &c., groups. The Domestic Series into—Cooking, Washing, Ironing, Baking, Dairy, &c.

On joining the community I enter my name on the list of whatever group I please—thus on the dairy, the orchard and the market-garden. I work an hour, say, at the churn, six hours at picking apples for market, and three at sorting potatoes. I am credited by so much on each of the groups’ books. Each group votes on what the time of each member is worth. The ordinary “day’s work” is from 90 cents to a dollar.

The chiefs of all the groups of a Series hold conclaves with the “chief of a series” & arrange matters for the series. The series chiefs also meet under a head chief or chief of the phalanx & legislate on matters of more general character.

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A man works at anything that he finds himself suitable for. Many are members of a good many groups. If a man does not work with any group with which he has registered his name during two months, he is considered to have left it, &c. If a man works only occasionally, irregularly, his time is valued at a lower figure.

The dining room is much like that of a first class hotel—spacious & neat & comfortable. Tables arranged as in an eating-house, but large enough for perhaps a dozen to each. The carte of each meal lies on the table (carte du jour with the prices (cost) of the dishes, which as you know are very low. But every little item counts. Bread 1 cent, butter ½ cent or 1 cent, plate of ros’ beef, 3 cents, &c. Ice cream “a la français”—a big saucer full, 2 cents. The cost varies with the season. During drought & short pasture, buttercakes are graduated in stamping a little smaller, &C.

The waiters are the prettiest & most refined and graceful young ladies of the community mainly—some of the “most respectable” young fellows, too. You are introduced to the waitress of your table.

Miss Mundy mine was, a very good-looking, lady-like young woman, intelligent accomplished & well informed—dressed with great taste. It was odd enough & not altogether agreeable to hold a conversation with her upon social topics in which she showed a philosophical mind and a cultivated and refined judgement, she bending over my shoulder. She takes part in the general conversation of the table, but comes & goes as there is occasion. Is a very good waiter indeed—clean, sweet, and good-natured.

Why do all the best of the young people choose to be waiters & so be deprived of the social enjoyment of the meals with their friends in a great measure? They all dine to-gether afterwards, and as they are the best, it is a privilege to dine with them—of course to wait with them. If it was not, they would be paid the best—(or should be.) So the most cultivated of the men are attached to the domestic groups (more or less—they generally also attach themselves to some of the out-door-exercising groups as well.) The chief of the series is a French physician. There are other foreigners, fine-looking gentlemen, also in it and among the waiters, head waiters, carvers, &c.

There is one I must speak of particularly. He was son of a wealthy, aristocratic family. Brought up in style; “got religion,” became an Episcopal clergyman, was eloquent & much beloved & esteemed. Had a country church with a salary of $1,000. Didn’t see that he was doing good. Worried & fretted & studied & prayed & fasted. Concluded the system was wrong & he was not sincere. Gave it up sick of life. Wandered & wasted. Accidentaly came hither. Stayed a week. And one night ran out & threw up his hat & declared the problem was solved. Here was a Christianity as was a Christianity & a church as was a church. Threw off his black coat & asked leave to work. Got tremendously tired, feverish &c. Found it wouldn’t [do]. But was determined [381]to work with his hands—“in labor is prayer.”—& went into domestic series. And we were introduced to him, a fine, sad, quiet gentlemanly fellow—peeling potatoes.

N .B. Nobody blushes or boasts or seems to consider such employments at all to be kept in the dark or anything less of a regular thing than taking off their clothes for themselves when they go to bed. The fact is they have reconstructed a world for themselves & have forgotten the ways of the world outside.

I must tell you something of Mr. Arnold’s history. He was a merchant in N .Y. greatly interested in Five Point philanthropies. Gave himself much up to them—so too his wife. Both Massachusetts saints. He was finally so much interested in his reforming labors that he gave his whole time to them & the Unitarians made him minister at large with a roving commission much such as you would like.

He then threw himself into it. Gave himself to the work—until he got perfectly sickened, disgusted, and overwhelmed. With large means & doing nothing else, he found it was stopping leaks in a rotten ship. The more you stopped the breech up the more it was widened. Had a conviction much like that of the Episcopal clergyman that the system was wrong, that the so-called Church of Christ was wrong. That it was not Christianity he was preaching—that Christians did not love-one-another, &c., &c., &c.

Went to the West and found the most solitary place he could & there lived hermit-like with his family for several years. His wife says, it was the greatest relief & happiness to her to feel that there they could do others but little harm & others could do them but little.

While so situated, Mr. Spring (his wife’s brother) went to Europe with * Fuller—& while gone certain Fourierite periodicals that he had taken were sent to him (Arnold). He did not like them, but read them. So did his wife, until after a year both suddenly found each-other converted. They came to the Phalanx & are fully convinced that it must be by this way only that the kingdom shall come.

The arrangement of the dormitories is much like that of a hotel; a large number of small bed-rooms for single parties and suites of rooms for families. There are three or four tenements adjoining the main-house, built into it like a block with no communication with it or with each other except by a gallery in the rear to enable the inmates to go to the dining-hall or the work rooms (kitchen &c.) dry shod. There is also one entirely detached cottage.

These families could have their meals sent to them (by some additional payment) but in fact none do—all preferring the common refectory. Here families have their usual tables separate from others if they choose. Families separate, though, a good deal. Husband & wife & the younger children [382]generally together, but the older children “follow their attractions.” That is, being generally engaged as soon as they are big enough, they sit with their espoused.

In the evening from supper till 10 o’clock or later there was a good deal of recreation, walking parties, rowing parties, dancing & music. There are 6 pianos in the establishment & several guitars, &c. There was a music teacher & a French teacher. Also one of the French refugees teaches fencing & dancing, &c. But recreation of this sort was not general. The less cultivated however spent the evening much more elevatingly than most country people do—in conversation & discussions. There is very little reading done.

Most of the young ladies & some of the older men dressed á la Bloomer, generally not very tastefully. Some appeared to much greater advantage when so than in long skirts. A graceful action was much more graceful and gratifying where the movement of the leg could be seen. Some were very short skirted. Usually the kilt reached an inch or two below the knee, or enough to reach over it in sitting. Not always though. There was the most perfect natural propriety & good sense among them all. The Bloomer has ’been naturalized, and in an hour you are as accustomed to it as you would be in China. It is “all right.” Many who wore Bloomer in a.m. were in “evening dresses” later. Some appeared better & some worse for the change.

As to creeds, the majority are Swedenborgians, but there is nothing peculiar to the community. I should think persons of all the great nominally Christian churches from Catholics to Unitarians, or rationalists.

The very shortest Bloomer had me by the button sitting under the trees for half the evening telling me of her Spiritual Supping experience. She had had, during two months, frequent intercourse with her father who died eight years ago while she was a child, & received most delightful words from, and practical advice and assistance. She believed it all as fully as she did or could anything not absolutely tangible. She recognized the influence of spirits constantly upon her as she did heat & light. It was a regular thing. Thought there was much humbug. Foxes & Fishes were imposters. Others fools—self deceived. Her yarn didn’t amount to much. She was a person that would be easily imposed upon.

I have been, since last sheet, reading Tribune of Saturday (23rd.) If you haven’t it’s worth it—on Spiritual Manifestations & the Shekinah article on Judge Edmonds. And I add a little more.

She was convinced or held her faith entirely from the moral evidence —the general character of the communications she had received. First, though, she was startled by receiving answers to questions and suggestions in her own mind which she had not uttered or expressed in any way. As for material manifestations, she had certainly seen tables lifted and taken [383]across a room. She had stood on a table and been moved gently and steadily across the room & back to the exact spots on the carpet that the legs occupied before—no person being near the table, at 4 o’clock p.m., open daylight. It was in Massachusetts last spring or winter. The table was moved at her request to give evidence of the ability of the spirits to exercise material agency. Was guided as she directed, &c. As I said, she was the sort of person that would be easily imposed on and be run away with by her own imagination. Nevertheless, her facts & her faith impressed me with a little more respect for the matter.

As to the people of the community in general, I have a strong respect for them as hard-working, earnest, unselfish livers in the faith of a higher life for man on earth as well as “above.” There were fewer odd characters than I should have expected to find. Generally, there was much simplicity and self-containedness among them. I think they are living devoutly & more in accordance with the principles of Christ—among themselves—than any equal number of persons I ever saw living in the usual neighborhood intercourse together.

There is a certain class that they very much need to have associated with them. I could not help wishing Charles Elliott had joined them. Believing a good deal in their principles as I believe he does, he would have been exceedingly useful to them. They much need mechanics, but I think it is the fault of their theory that they do not have them. Their success without them is the more wonderful. I believe they have only one carpenter & a watch maker, or some such nearly useless thing to them. Having to pay high, of course, for all mechanics brought to do work for them from a distance.

What they need for improvement as a community of moral creatures is more attention to the intellectual. They want an Educational Series very much. They have no fit teacher—a Frenchman for want of a better acts as schoolmaster to the fry. But there is no proper nursery department & the children, & not the children alone, are growing without any proper discipline of mind. A rum set one would think they would make. But I must confess those who are breaking into manhood & especially into womanhood tell well for the system. They are young ladies & young gentlemen. Naturally and without effort or consciousness, so.

You had better go there next fall. I’ll go with you. Mr. Arnold was sorry you didn’t come with us. And others would be glad to see you. If you could give them a lecture on Hungary they would be gratified. Hadn’t you better get one up-with some reference to present position of things? Remodel your old one a little. I told them you would come bye & bye.

If we can make a boating-party for several days it will be pleasant in peach season—October rather too late. Charles Elliott ought to go with us. Be valuable to him as a market gardener.

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All the folks here. Nothing of importance. Beckwith not yet bought. In a fortnight I may leave home for a little while.