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Call number: Oneida HX656.O54 N953 1960d

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John Humphrey Noyes, as a young man, during his exhaustive Biblical studies at the Yale Theological Seminary, became convinced that he had found proof that the second coming of Jesus Christ had occurred during the generation of the Apostles. If this was true, as he believed, then it followed that men, instead of living in a state of sin, might, through prayer and right living, become perfect as Jesus had enjoined. The millenium was at hand! Sin no more! Selfishness, of all sins, was at the root of all human evils. Possessiveness was the base of all selfishness. Therefore possess nothing - or possess all things in common. He carried this logic even further:

marriage, always deemed most holy of sacraments, was, in his view, a selfish institution. It, too, must be abandoned.

So strong were his convictions that he began preaching his new doctrine, calling it Perfectionism or Bible Communism, and, to follow the word by the deed, he began an experiment in communal living among the members of his home family and a few near neighbors who had been converted to his belief.

This new system of Perfectionism seemed to bring great peace and happiness to its followers but it proved to be anathema to the inhabitants of Putney, the small Vermont town where they lived, and the communists were asked to leave. Just at the crucial moment, a Mr. Jonathan Burt, who had become a convert through Mr. Noyes's publications, invited him to come and see how well the sharing principle was working among the group which had recently joined the Burt family at the Indian sawmill on Oneida Creek. John Humphrey Noyes promptly accepted the invitation, came, was deeply impressed and felt it was the hand of providence that this group should become the nucleus of the large community he had envisioned.

From this point on, the story of the building of a Community home and the addition of many eager new members is the well-known history of the Oneida Community. This, it is not my purpose to recount. There remain, however, certain foot-notes, as it were, which I can add to this history.

It happened that a few years after the publication of My Father's House, Mr. Bernard De Voto stopped off one day to see my husband and urge him to write a sequel to My Father's House; another book giving more of the practical details of the management of community living which enabled the members to dwell happily together under circumstances requiring so much self-discipline and economy. Mr. De Voto added, humorously, that the Angel Moroni Mr. De Voto was a descendant of the Mormons -demanded that such a book be written by the son of John Humphrey Noyes. My husband, however, was not a man for details and felt no urge to write such a book. It was only some years later, when I read to him the memoirs I was writing for our children, that he seemed to think my account would be the answer to Mr. De Voto's request. I can only hope that the Angel Moroni will be satisfied.

To Constance, Barbara and Melinda and if the want it to Peter, Langford, Patrick and Geoffrey, with all my love.

When you children were very young you used to ask me to tell you stories of about the "olden days"; Barbie loved the Second Best Hat; Connie, the sad tale of Miss Chloe's Baby. Did Peter love the story of Uncle Charlie's Mustang? I do not remember and it may be that , after all, the memories I am about to record, since they are a girl's memories, will be most valued by my daughter's and grand-daughter. If I can please them now, when I am eighty-seven years old, I shall have greatly pleased myself. If my dear son and grandsons enjoy it I shall be doubly blessed.

The story of the founding of the Oneida Community in 1848 by your grandfather, John Humphrey Noyes, has been told many times by writers more accomplished than I. Therefore I shall not say more than that it was , to my mind, a brave and noble experiment, not only in religion but in the art of human association; a scholl of unselfishness, sacrifice and dedication whose equal I could not name. Since selfishness, sacrifice and dedication are qualities which, almost by definition, entail discipline and even suffering, the history of the Community is also a tale of hardships, abnegation and steadfastness; even of suffering. But I remember that in her old age my mother, who had lived half her adult life in this society, said that after living "in the world," she realized that never again could there be happiness such as she had know in the Community. This, from a wise and honest witness, is all I need to say.

In the pags that follow I wish to tell you first about my nearest and dearest: my grandfather, and grandmother and my mother. After that, it occurs to me that you should know more than perhaps you have ever heard about the Community itself, how it looked, how it was operated, about the men and women who presided over it, how we children lived, what we did and what we though. Then in case it might be forgotten in these later years, I shal tel you what I remember about the days after the COmmunity was abandoned in favor of "worldy" living, and how very strange it seem to a young girl brought up to Community ways. In telling this there may be things which I have forgotten or remembered wrongly, buth this is how I recal it. I leave it you as part of your inheritance from "the olden days."

Corinna Ackley Noyes

Before writing my childhood memories of my grandfather, Joseph Ackley, I want you to know something of his background and his family. His father, Rodney, was a well-to-do farmer owning a large farm and a pleasant and comfortable home near the small village of East Hamilton, New York. The Ackley family, with the Carriers, close blood-kin, had migrated from New England at the end of the 18th century. Rodney Ackley's was a large family even for those days, consisting of father, mother and nine children, of whom Joseph was the oldest.

Family history reports Rodney as a close-fisted man but that his stinginess was off-set by his wife, Ruth's generosity. Old daguerreotypes tell the story only too well. Rodney's face is bleak and hard. Ruth's face is smiling and benign. As far as I know, Joseph lived at home during his youth and probably had the usual amount of schooling allowed farmer 5 sons. After that he helped his father on the farm until he married Julia Carrier, a second cousin, my grandmother, and they moved to a farm near Beaver Meadow, a small hamlet not far away.

Now Providence takes a hand. Of all the nine children in the Rodney Ackley family, Joseph seems to have been the only one endowed with spiritual curiosity and the urge to seek spiritual truth, no matter where it led him or what sacrifices it entailed. Not all the facts are available, but from some source Joseph and two spiritually-minded neighbors, William Hatch and Daniel Nash, had evidently come upon the writings of John Humphrey Noyes and had become so impressed with his ideas that they had started a small, semi-communal group at Beaver Meadow. Then came the chance to attend the three-day meetings held at the home of John Foote at Lairdsville, New York, a small village within driving distance of Beaver Meadow, and there he met John Noyes in the flesh and heard him expound his theories of Perfectiomsm.

The result was that Grandpa, the Nashes and Hatches became fullfledged converts at once and decided to ask Mr. Jonathan Burt, an ardent convert, whom they had met at Lairdsville, if they might join him at Oneida. Burt had been a Noyes disciple for eleven years, while living at the time in

the nearby village of Chittenango, but within the year he had bought the old Indian sawmill and forty-acre wood lot on Oneida Creek. However, in trying to do most of the work of felling trees, hauling logs to the mill and doing the mill work himself, his health had broken down and he was obliged to hire help. When Grandpa suggested joining with all the Beaver Meadow group, Mr. Burt promptly accepted.

The sharing spirit had taken hold of these people to such an extent that the Burts offered to take Grandpa, his wife and two children, into their own small home for the month during which he, Mr. Nash and Mr. Hatch were building the rude structure that was all they could afford, in time and money, to house their families. As may be imagined, the next year was one of hardship, cold and crowded living in a house so hastily built that it scarcely deserved the name. They had only frugal fare and incessant hard work, yet the spirit of Perfectionism triumphed, and conditions were met happily and without complaint.

Soon after the Beaver Meadow families were settled in their new quarters, Mr. Burt wrote to Mr. Noyes, telling him of the activities at the sawmill, of the promising start already made there, and invited him to come and make this small center of communal living on Oneida Creek the nucleus of the community of his dreams. In response to this invitation, Mr. Noyes came to visit, greatly liked what he saw of the prevailing spirit and gratefully accepted the offer.

The next thing to be done was to find a home for Mr. Noyes and his family, since the Putney Community had just been abandoned owing to the hostility of the little Vermont village. Fortunately, a near neighbor of Mr. Burt's was willing to sell his four-room log house with twenty-three acres of land on Oneida Creek. There was also on the property a one-room hut, twelve by twelve, which had been used as a shoe-shop. Possession was to be given immediately. This solved the problem temporarily. The house, by a little squeezing, could accommodate not only Mr. and Mrs. Noyes and their young son Theodore, but also Mr. and Mrs. Cragin and their youngest son. This was particularly convenient because at that time Mr. Cragin was acting as a liaison between Mr. Noyes and all wordly affairs, a sort of business manager, attending to publications, and collecting funds for the new project.

Though conditions were very primitive compared to the old Noyes home in Putney, the Noyeses and Cragins were brimming with enthusiasm. Everything looked promising and Mrs. Cragin, who had a passion for teaching young children, at once turned the shoe-shop into a comfortable school room, a boon to children and mothers alike.

"Nothing succeeds like success", and, from hopeful believers, money

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began to come in until they had $2800 which they promptly invested in more land and more log houses. This, however, was not sufficient to meet the needs of the growing family group. News of the promising young community had found its way to northern Vermont and soon five more families from there applied for membership, were quickly accepted and, by taking the ferry across Lake Champlain and the Erie Canal from Albany to Durhamville, made their way in three weeks time to the new community on Oneida Creek.

Now the matter of crowded housing was acute. Something permanent and adequate must be provided. Luckily, by this time there were fifty-one members, and among them many men with the training or aptitude to build an adequate community home. From nearby Syracuse came Mr. Erastus Hamilton, a master architect, and he and Mr. Noyes selected what seemed a most suitable site, on the brow of a low hill nearby. The foundation was of easily-procured field stone; the super-structure of wood, of which there was an ample supply at the mill. There was only one professional stonemason, but he chose several likely young men as helpers and in jig-time that part of the work was done. The actual construction was also done in record time, since there were several carpenters, joiners and cabinet-makers among the members, and even the women helped with the lathing, so that by the end of the year 1848, the Mansion House, a building sixty feet long by thirty-five feet deep, three stories high plus a usable attic, was ready for occupancy. Now the time was at hand for the deliverance of the Beaver Meadow group. Now there was room and warmth and a home for them all.

This, in brief, is the story of how my grandparents came to Oneida Creek and how the Oneida Community began. It is too long a story for me to tell in detail, a story of hardship and hard work and hard trials, but as it was told to me even as a child, I could recognize the triumphant spirit of those people, and their devotion. My Grandfather Ackley, from those early days to the end of his long life, never lost that spirit of devotion.

My first memory of him was a little child's impression of a dignified and rather austere person. This may seem strange, in view of the loving intimacy that grew up between us later. The fact was that during my early years in the old Community I seldom saw him and felt scarcely acquainted with him. After the Break-up, when we had moved to Turkey Street, he occasionally walked over to see us and seemed interested in the place and in our family. It was then that I began to know that he was really a loving man and a man who wanted to be loved, and from that time on, our friendship grew deep and abiding.

As a young man he must have had a commanding figure, tall, broadshouldered, with a fine head and strong features. Probably he was blond,

He had moved from a cramped little room adjoining the Court to the large, pleasant room at the foot of the Mansard stairs, and here he lived for a number of years. Mr. John Skinner lived just across the way, in what was the old South Sitting Room, and Grandpa spent quite a little time with him in friendly service, since Mr. Skinner was very feeble and had no regular nurse that I remember. In those days, one depended on friends or family for nursing care and, until nearing the end, that was usually sufficient.

Even while he was tenderly nursing the illness of a friend, Grandpa was ill himself, having developed a stomach ulcer, an unusual complaint in those days, and for weeks at a time he would live on milk with lime water, soda crackers and dry cheese. He asked for no care at these times, except that someone should bring him milk daily and keep him supplied with the crackers and cheese, which he kept in a small china pail in his closet. Dr. Leonard Dunn, the family dentist, was his only medical consultant, as far as I know. For several years his one room with the nearby public bathroom, seemed to meet all his needs. Later, after Mr. Skinner's death, Grandpa moved to this now-vacated sitting room and small bedroom adjoining, and I like to remember that he spent his last days in those larger, sunnier rooms. By that time he had acquired more furniture; a bookcase and desk, two or three comfortable chairs and a lounge on which he frequently rested and where, one day, he so serenely died.

One morning, after I had spent the night in Grandma's guest room - a former stage ante-room off the Big Hall - I decided to make an early call on Grandpa, before going to my work in the Home Office below. To my surprise he was still in bed, sitting bolt upright against the headboard, and when I exclaimed over his position, he made light of it; said he often sat up like that most of the night, though he had never mentioned the fact that he had trouble breathing. I asked him if he could sleep that way. He said, "Not much, but at my age one doesn't need much sleep and it's the grandest time in the world to think." Heroic Grandpa, heroic all his life, but how few of us realized it!

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Grandpa, although one of the earliest joiners, was never a Central Member, evidently lacking some quality of leadership or authority which the position required, but I doubt if there was a more devout or devoted soul in the entire Community. He had an unwavering faith in God and in Mr. Noyes as His annointed-one, and he lived the unselfish life taught by the Bible, seemingly without effort. It was simply the manifestation of a consecrated soul.

An incident I remember showed the effect of such a personality upon the unregenerate. One day, while we were living at Turkey Street, Grandpa walked over to see us and had been looking with his practiced eye at our orchard, which stood on a rise of ground behind the barn. As he neared the barn he heard angry voices, then oaths flying back and forth. Grandpa's Community training couldn't stand for that. He stepped into the barn just as our Irish hired man and the equally Irish foreman of a railroad gang were squaring off for a fight.

Grandpa simply stood in the doorway, looking at them. Then he said in his clear, gentle voice, "Oh, tut! tut! I wouldn't talk so!"

That was enough. The men's arms dropped to their sides. They stood silently gaping for a moment, then turned and went about their business. Those were simple words, but there was a spiritual power behind them which mastered the situation at once.

While staying with Grandpa at different times, I had heard him speak of the victories of the spirit and that the last enemy to be overcome was death. I did not realize then how much that subject was occupying his thoughts until the very end.

He had a stroke one afternoon and someone came to me in the office below and told me to come quickly. My mother and grandmother could not be found so that, save for the nurse, he was alone. He was lying on the lounge with his eyes closed, but he was still breathing. I knelt beside him and took his hand. Then, to let him know I was there, I spoke to him. "Grandpa, dear –"

For a while I felt stunned. He was so sure that he had overcome death, and yet he had seemingly died. Later it came to me that what he had overcome was the fear of death and so that passing into another life was, indeed, a victory and a joyful translation.
 

This story set me wondering how much of the history of my rather unique childhood I could recover by dipping deep into my subconscious, so, as my children heartily endorse the idea, I have decided to make at least a beginning.

My earliest recollection is of lying in my Grandmother Ackley's arms while she sang in a sweet, low voice, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." I was too young to sense the meaning of the words, but her faith and fervor must have been dimly understood, I think, as a power that meant safety and peace.

From then on my grandmother continues to be the outstanding person in my child's world. Why she should have taken my mother's place, I never inquired, but it was doubtless owing to a rule of the Central Committee which must have feared the growth of an undue "mother spirit" if I was left too much in my mother's care. Whatever the reason, it is my grandmother's sweet face, gentle voice and comforting love I most clearly recall as I look back to my earliest days, and there is never a word, look or act of hers that I would wish changed.

Grandmother how clearly, to this day, my memory pictures her -was short in stature, only a little over five feet tall, quite plump and rather broad. Her fine black hair, parted in the middle, the ends curling under all around, was worn short as was the Community custom for most women, and kept in place by two black side-combs. Those side-combs! How well I remember them! With them she always smoothed her hair before every special occasion.

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Her eyes she always described as "butternut color," a sort of greenish hazel. They were not unusually large but there was an ingenuousness of expression, a warm friendliness which strangers never forgot and which was one of the reasons, perhaps, why it seemed so natural that, in the big Community family, she should be called Aunt Julia.

Time had begun its inevitable etching when I knew her, and there were many fine lines in her face, but they were lines that only added strength and beauty, especially around her mouth, which was generous in size and smiled easily and often. Her nose was straight, her chin somewhat pointed and her forehead full and of good height. Added to these mature beauties she had a wonderfully smooth fair skin and was so exquisitely fastidious about her person that she had the delicate and indescribable fragrance of a nice, clean baby.

I never remember seeing her untidy or in soiled clothes, and yet she was a very industrious person. In the early days she was reckoned one of the family's best cooks, especially renowned for her doughnuts. Later, when I knew her, she had evidently served her turn at heavy labor and was given the care of the Reception Room, Vestibule and Front Hall.

Besides these duties, mornings and evenings she washed the glass and silver for the dining room and by early afternoon was expected to be ready to "wait on company," a duty she carried on for some years after the Breakup. If she were told company had arrived and must be "waited on" the phrase always used her first instinct was to run her side-combs through her hair, then she would smooth down her apron, a gingham one in the forenoon, a black silk in the afternoon, and her toilet was complete. She could have met the Queen without a shade of self-consciousness. It was a simple duty to be done and, as a person, she hardily entered into it.

I was not old enough to sense what the "Break-up" must have meant to Grandma. It must have been a severe shock, for both she and Grandpa were still staunch believers in the old Community theories, and, to add to their sorrow, my Mother, their only living child, joined the "seccessionists," the "Townerites," so called, and married Martin Kinsley, also a "Townerite," by whom she had had two children. There must have been some painful sessions between Mother, Grandmother and Grandfather before they could reconcile themselves to having her go over to the enemy, but in the end they showed their life-long training as peacemakers, for I was never conscious of any break in their loving interest toward her or her children.

Outwardly Grandma's life was not greatly changed by the "Break-up." She still lived in her same old room, continued going to the dining room for her meals, though the old dining room must have seemed somewhat empty, once the "Townerites" had taken over the Company dining room in the

Socially there must have been a big adjustment to be made. In 1879, I have been told, the Big Meetings in the Hall were discontinued but the Loyalists held meetings in the Directors' room, the old East Room of Children's House days, Mr. Hamilton being the leader. These meetings were carried on during the whole period of his presidency of four years.

Grandma always attended them, which must have given her a feeling of spiritual support and her life must have flowed on pretty much as usual. Recreation and entertainment, however, were now up to the individual, and her evenings, after the short meeting, would have dragged sadly had she not started an evening reading hour for boys, ranging in age from seven to ten or twelve. She began taking the Youth's Companion, the first paper ever printed for children, which was on a par with St. Nicholas in point of youthful interest. There were at least two exciting serials in each issue and a number of short stories and, in case the interest flagged, she had recourse to St. Nicholas or Harper's Young People, old standbys, which could be drawn from the Mansion House Library.

At seven-thirty each evening Grandma 5 room would be filled with boys, every chair taken, the broad window sills packed tight and with several sitting or lying on the floor, all absorbed in the stories and quiet as mice. The readings were kept up for some years, until livelier interests attracted the boys. Then they were dropped, and one would find Grandma alone in her room, knitting in the twilight.

At times, if I happened in before dark, she might be reading from an old diary or the Community's Daily Journal, reliving in mind, I suppose, the simple, happy doings of the old Community life. Sometimes she would take from her table drawer a much worn copy of Pizzaro, a drama which was given on the stage in the early days and in which she had played the part of Elvira, the heroine. Often she would recite some of her lines from this play which she did with surprising fire and passion.

In the old Community days it seemed to be the custom for people to change their rooms every little while, probably for the same reason that they often changed their occupations; to avoid humdrum routine. It was always quite an exciting event and we children liked to happen around, especially if the mover was a woman, to see what she might have acquired besides the necessary furnishings of bed, bureau, table and a couple of chairs.

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If the woman was a beauty-lover there might be a miniature bureau or a what-not, gift of some friend who had a talent for cabinet making. Perhaps a gaily covered ottoman, which gave extra storage space, or a well-padded Boston rocker with a "tidy" in crewel work. But to us children, most desirable of all belongings were the vases of wax flowers kept under a glass bell, very sacred, which only the artistic few were able to make.

At the time of my earliest memory Grandma was living in the room opening from the north landing of the main front staircase, now ~1959~ known as the Historical Room. Today it seems like very cramped quarters for both bedroom and sitting room, but in those days every room in the house was occupied, and a few people were even sleeping in the garret.

One rather eccentric woman, Miss Frank Hillerman, had a small cubby up there, its only light coming from a skylight, its furnishings just a huge, unpainted wooden cradle on sturdy rockers, a small table, one hard chair and a looking glass. The cradle large enough for an adult held, of course, the customary nice, Community substitute for a mattress, a plump tick of dried corn husks and was made up with sheets, blankets and pillow. There was a curtain which could be drawn across the entrance of the cubby and to provide fresh air, if the day were fair, the skylight could be lifted. At times, when the house was crowded, two small rooms in the gable ends of the main garret were used as bedrooms, but to our childish imagination, Miss Frank was up there alone, holding rats, mice and occasional bats in scorn. Certainly she was without doubt the "bravest" woman in the world, in our world, at least.

It was while Grandma was still living in the present-day Historical Room that I had a well-remembered bout with the measles. This was shortly after the Break-up and, for the first time in most of their lives, the men and women of the Community having married, were having the experience of setting up housekeeping for themselves. My mother was engaged in making the upper floor of the "Concrete," a small cottage standing in the Quadrangle, near the Tontine, ready for our first home as a family. Measles weren't considered serious anyway, if proper care was given, so I was handed over to Grandma's tender mercy.

Her room was ordinarily light and airy, but both light and air were considered bad for measles, so the shades were drawn down, the windows kept shut and I had to lie on Grandma's feather bed, covered closely with woolen blankets lest a draft of cool air strike me. I was burning with fever and longing for a drink, even a sip of cold water, but all the liquid I was allowed was hot black tea, which I loathed, and, for nourishment, thin, hot gruel. To sponge a sick person to reduce fever was unheard of. It would have been considered sure death.

Today such treatment seems most benighted, but Community people prided themselves on holding advanced ideas in their care of the sick, and their records for health were unusually good, on the whole. In this case, certainly, the treatment produced a cure, for I made a good recovery, and even Grandma survived the ordeal of having to sleep with me in a narrow bed, besides giving me untiring care.

Many years later Grandma moved into the room opposite, always called the "Vestibule Room." It was a good bit longer, though no wider, but much pleasanter, as the three windows looked out onto the Quadrangle. It was in this room the boys used to assemble for the evening readings. By this time Grandma had begun to show signs of worldliness. She had got some handy friend to paper the walls with a pretty flowered paper and besides her old furniture had bought Nottingham lace curtains, an ingrain carpet and a sewing machine.

On the walls were some framed photographs, a looking glass and her "what-not." "What-nots" were always considered a great ornament to a room. Grandmother's was of black walnut, quite plain but nicely made, and, as she hadn't much bric-a-brac, was devoted to practical uses. It held her lamp, some favorite books, a jar which sometimes held pieces of candied sweet flag and a small bottle of spirits of peppermint. But it was lifted high out of the realm of the prosaic by a beautiful bottle of Baccarat glass filled with white rose cologne, which always stood on the middle shelf.

This was a gift from my mother as thanks for Grandmother's ever-faithful care of me, but how Mother could have afforded such a piece of extravagance out of her slender appropriation, I cannot guess. It must have taken much scrimping of necessities. However, it was greatly prized and we children deemed it a special treat to smell the exquisite perfume and have the moistened stopper pressed to our handkerchief. Those were days of very simple pleasures.

Having more space in her new room, Grandma, at once, as a lure to children, acquired from some quarter a large box of hardwood blocks of various shapes and sizes, a board for playing a clever game with marbles and an audiphone. This audiphone was a queer contraption, consisting of a giant size mouth organ supported on small posts, the air being supplied by hand squeezed bellows which were ingeniously attached to the mouth organ. As with the later pianolas, across the top of the mouth organ ran a broad ribbon of perforated paper which produced the tune to be played. Grandma wasn't particularly musical, but she seemed to value this oddity greatly and kept it carefully put away in her top bureau drawer, considering it the last word in high entertainment.

If I was visiting Grandma and the day was dull and I could think of noth-

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ing better to do, I was allowed to play the audiphone and could render with great effect Listen to the Mocking Bird or Columbia, Gem of the Ocean. There were other touching numbers, but at the end of two selections my hand that was squeezing the bellows would be aching with such fatigue that the last bars were but little more than a wheeze.

Oh, I mustn't forget one other advantage the larger room afforded a trundle bed great fun which enabled one of us children to spend an occasional night with Grandmother.

Grandma was quite content with the Vestibule Room for some time, but when a small room nearby was vacated, (what is now the Serving Room adjoining the Big Hall), she was glad to have it for a bedroom, still keeping her old quarters as a sitting room. This new room was rather a bleak place, just one small window for light, the furnishings her bed, a table and a couple of chairs. On the floor a small bedside rug, the rest bare linoleum, but she used it only for sleeping and, the move allowed her to have a good looking couch in her sitting room where her bed had formerly stood.

How long she remained in these rooms I cannot say, since dates mean little in young lives, but as Grandma grew older her health began to fail. All the old familiar duties had had to be given up, stairs were difficult to climb and when the chance came to move down into the western end of the old South Room the room had been divided she was glad to take it and even to submit to being cared for by a nice friendly woman from the neighborhood.

I was married by that time and living at Niagara Falls so saw her seldom, but Mother and my sister, Meg, kept in close touch with her and superintended her care. During her last days, Meg tells me, she seemed to dread dying, but as the end approached she lost all fear, was happy and serene and said to Meg one day, "To go or stay, it is all right with me.

Her "going" however, meant a great deal to all her grandchildren. We not only missed her precious personality but, while she lived, there was always a special home center at the Mansion, always someone happy to see us. We felt as if we still "belonged."

After she left, for a long time, the Mansion House felt lonely to us. We wandered around with our memories, trying to link them up with the present. But time passed, a new generation was born. Pierrepont and I came back to live again in the old Mansion for a time, then in a house of our own nearby, the Red House.

Up to this point I have written my own memories of my Grandmother but you cannot get a true estimate of her character unless I tell you something of her early life before she met and married my Grandfather.

Julia Carrier, her maiden name, was the youngest of eleven children born

to Clarissa and Ebeneezer Carrier, living at the time on a small farm near the hamlet of Liberty, N. Y. in the foothills of the Catskills. It was a wild, unsettled country of dense forests interspersed with clearings from which the trees had been cut but the land had yet to have the stumps removed and to be made usable for crops. Ebeneezer had wrested a small farm from the forest, built himself a house and barn, married and was evidently bent on showing the world that he could raise and support a family of champion size in spite of unfavorable circumstances when his wife died, leaving Julia, a child of three, to the special care of Maria, her oldest daughter.

Maria, a girl of nineteen, took over also the supervision of the whole household for the next three years, then she married a peddler of good prospects and left home taking Julia with her. For the next two years Julia flourished. Maria was devoted to the child and taught her to read, write, sew and sing as Maria had a fine singing voice. Grandma, in speaking of her, always especially mentioned her beauty. Apparently she was the flower of the flock.

Had these conditions continued Julia would probably have had opportunities for a good education but after two years of Maria's loving care Maria died and Julia was taken back to her father. Here she found scant welcome as, during her absence, he had married a widow with eight partially grown children of her own. Julia was now eight years old and deemed able to care for young children and do light housework so that the hard-pressed Ebeneezer, her father, decided she should be "farmed out." For her services she was to be given bed, board, needed clothing and a chance to go to school when she could be spared, which was seldom.

Her first home was with her stepmother's son where she lived two years, during which time she was taught to milk the cows and was expected to do so from then on. When she was ten she was loaned to a brother-in-law's brother. There were no children in the household but the gay young wife went visiting often and Julia had to do practically all the housework besides milking, feeding and watering the livestock twice a day. All the water used on the farm had to be drawn from a well sixty feet deep which today would be considered a day's work in itself.

After this period of doing the work of a seasoned adult she went to live with a newly married sister. Here she might have looked forward to some loving care but the sister bore four children in the next six years and never had Julia had to work so hard. Besides the usual housework and baby tending she had to prepare the home-grown flax and learn to weave it into linen cloth for sheets and pillow cases, card and spin the wool for yarn for the home-knit stockings, and, to use to the full every spare minute, she had to learn to weave rag carpets from material brought in by neighbors for which

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her sister was paid. The one bright spot in her life was the day she could take the family washing down to the spring and spend the whole day there. The water, of course, was cold and it must have been back-breaking work but the spring was thirty-five rods from the house on the edge of the forest and there she could be alone, too far away to be interrupted by any household needs and there she could find herself and dream of a happier future. That this place must have seemed a harbor of refuge is shown, I think, by the fact that her long day's washing at the spring was the only story she ever told me of her youth and the spring was the only place she wanted to see when she visited relatives in Liberty many years later.
Julia stayed with her sister until she was eighteen when, after ten years of hardship, fortune suddenly smiled on her. An uncle living in East Hamilton asked her to come and make her home with him and his wife. Here Julia received the love and care she had not known since the death of her sister Maria. She was given good clothes and taken to church where she experienced a sincere conversion and later met my Grandfather with whom there was such a strong mutual attraction that soon they decided to marry.

Grandmother's story as told to one of the editors of the American Socialist was published as one of a series entitled "Stories of Poverty."

In finishing her account she says: "Joseph not only proved a good, kind husband but through his influence I was brought to the Oneida Community where I found emancipation from household drudgery and social slavery."

This last paragraph sounds as if the editor couldn't resist the chance to put in a plea for Bible Communism but the story itself, I am sure, is an accurate history of her life.

After reading Grandma's story I can only marvel at the refined sweet-tempered woman I knew as my precious Grandma. Was it inheritance from her father, who, it was said, was often asked to read a sermon when the local preacher was absent and did it so well and with such fervor that the parishioners preferred him to the regular incumbent, or was it Community training and association that molded her? She had had very little schooling yet never did I hear her make a grammatical error in her speech and when she read aloud she never mispronounced a word but read clearly, fluently and very intelligently in a low well-modulated voice. It was a pleasure to hear her. I don't wonder that the young boys gathered around her like bees around a honey-pot for her evening reading hour.

Her manner when meeting company I have already spoken of but she was always the same sweet, serene, friendly woman wherever you met her, ever ready to give a helping hand. Many times the memory of my grandparents' silent heroism has given me courage in a dark hour.

"You asked me to tell you my feelings since giving up the care of my baby. You knew my trials and temptations when the move was first proposed. I gave her up at last, with the others, heartily, feeling that she would have every want supplied and that I should be a better and happier woman for doing so.I now realize, as I did not before, that the old way of each mother's caring exclusively for her own child, begets selfishness and idolatry and in many ways tends to degrade woman. The new system works well in every respect. Yours for giving up everything that stands in the way of improvement and the revival."

Poor Mother, so loving, so unselfish, so truly good, how I can now sympathize with her "trials and temptations" in her struggle against "idolatry" towards her first baby. All this, of course, was long before my own memory begins. She must have slept with me at night during my first year, as that was the Community custom, but I was too young to have kept in mind more than an instinct of deep attachment which persisted through later years, when she was being disciplined for the "mother-spirit" and we were often kept apart for a week or two at a time.

What she felt during these periods I can only guess, but I can remember well my own feelings when, during one two-week period of separation, I caught a glimpse of her passing through a hallway near the Children's House and rushed after her, screaming. She knew what I was too young to know that if she stopped to talk with me another week might be added to our sentence. There was no time to explain. Hoping, I suppose, to escape, she stepped quickly into a nearby room. But I was as quick as she. I rushed after her, flung myself upon her, clutching her around the knees, crying and begging her not to leave me, until some Children's House mother, hearing the commotion, came and carried me away.

That has been a painful and lasting memory, but there were many pleasant ones. I was deeply conscious of my mother's beauty and of her wonderful voice and, although I was embarrassed, as all children are when their parents are in any way conspicuous, I loved to look at her when she was singing on the stage and to listen to her lovely songs.

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I wish I could describe her as I saw her then but, as I suppose is natural, children are almost never able to see their parents as objective personalities. When they look, they see "Mother" or "Father," a blurred composite of their own emotions toward their parent, not the person himself. I was a natural beauty-lover, so that my memory records the knowledge that my mother was beautiful, as it records the beauty of her voice, but it gives me no clear picture of her appearance.

I know from later memories that she was tall for a woman, had a sumptuous figure, a fine, erect carriage. She had light brown hair, eyes blue and deep-set, a mouth so richly curved that her girlish pictures make me think, somehow, of ripe fruit. Her later photographs, taken towards the end of the old Community, have, for me at least, a more serious beauty; the modeling around the eyes has a tragic quality, the expression of the face is sad, noble, resigned. I do know that, even in old age, she had an ineffaceable beauty of another kind. My daughters have said that this was because she had perfect bones. I do not know about that: perhaps what I always saw was the beauty of her spirit.

A natural modesty, plus the rigorous Community training, made my mother a woman without vanity. She must have been admired in her lovely girlhood. Indeed, William Hepworth Dixon, in his book, New America, in recounting the tale of his visit to the Community, comments on the "short dresses" and their wearers.

"... a dress in which a plain woman escapes notice and a pretty girl looks bewitching. I am told that it is no part of Noyes' design that the young ladies of his family should look bewitching: for such is not his theory of a modest and moral woman's life; but for my own poor self, being only a Gentile and a sinner, I could not help seeing that many of his young disciples have been gifted with rare beauty, and that two of the singing-girls, Alice Ackley and Harriet Worden, have a grace and suppleness of form, as well as loveliness of face and hand, to warm a painter's heart."

What my mother thought or even if she knew of this comment, I have no idea. She sang and was praised for it, in the moderate Community way. What they called the "Prima Donna Spirit" was severely condemned, so I doubt if such praise overwhelmed her. A note in the Daily Journal records that her mother, my grandmother Ackley, announced in the Evening Meeting that she wished "to join Mr. Noyes in dedicating Alice and her gift for singing, to God." Not even a talent was to be considered a selfish possession, but was, instead, a contribution to the whole group and to God.

At exactly what age I do not know, but possibly in her late twenties, Mother and several of the other young women of her "class" were asked

to pose for one of the men who was studying photography. Remarkably enough, they were allowed to pose in World's Clothes; a lace-trimmed, off-the-shoulders gown, jewelry - a brooch and necklace and jeweled combs - and a wonderful "waterfall" of false curls. These pictures, which my mother regarded with horror to the end of her days as being immodest and a piece of shocking vanity, confirm Mr. Dixon's report of her "rare beauty."

How I wish I could remember her more clearly in those early days. Later, of course, during the painful years on the farm, I do remember her perfectly; remember how I loved her, how I worried about her, too much hard work, too many babies, too little money. Those memories I can hardly bear to recall, and yet I never remember Mother's complaining about her lot, never heard her lament that her singing days were over. As my daughter has written of her, She was a beauty and an artist, music should have been her life; she was Mary, not Martha, although she acted Martha for fifty years." In a way, this still seems to me a great waste, but in another way, her life of love and service is one I am proud to remember.

Her voice was a most unusual quality, as rich as a contralto but with the range of a dramatic soprano, and when she sang, from the beautiful oratorio music of The Creation, the aria, With Verdure Clad, or that majestic aria by Von Weber, Ocean, thou mighty monster curled, Like a green serpent round the world, I was overcome with emotion. Oratorio music was what she loved best and what was best suited to her voice.

In 1869, when she was twenty-two years old, it was decided by the Central Committee to send my mother, Minerva Norton, Abram and Charles Burt to New York City to study singing with Dr. Boehm, organist and choir master of St. Mark's Church. The idea was, I think, to perfect them as a quartet for the home concerts. I doubt if they had any individual instruction which, according to Community theory, might have encouraged that Prima Donna Spirit, so strongly disapproved. Still, they were well taught by a notable teacher and there were other advantages, for though they lived at the small Community Center, established there, they did have a whiff of the outer air and came back home, probably, with a somewhat broader outlook, as well as with some fine quartets for the family enjoy' ment. To this day, snatches of those old songs come back to me and with them the setting and the poetic atmosphere. One I especially remember was Shakespeare's I know a hank whereon the wild thyme grows, set to an English glee. They sang many of the old English glees.

I am not sure what my mother's special work was, during the Community days. I think she helped supervise the housework at times and, since she was a fine cook, I presume she took her turn in the kitchen. She also trained the children's chorus and under her tutelage it acquired quite

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 repertoire for group singing on the stage at the popular Community concerts. These performances by the children were a great success with the outside public. See, 'Tis Sow, Sow Doth the Peasant, I Put My Right Hand In, Jolly Boys, and Johnny Schmoker, were special favorites.

Programs of concerts given by the Community during the 1870's show that my mother sang some of the simpler arias from the operas, as well as many German songs which, though sung in English, always so stirred the emotions. For encores, I remember that she often sang Annie Laurie, Coming Through the Rye and The Last Rose of Summer. The rich quality of her voice was especially adapted to the negro spirituals and when she sang Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen, Roll, Jordan, Roll and Go Down, Moses, cold chills would seize me and I would think of repentance for past misdeeds.

In Mother's later years, after Father Kinsley died, she lived in the Mansion House. She would not travel nor stay more than a day or two with any of her married children, but, she always said, moving was her way of travel, and she did move frequently, from one house or apartment to another. She enjoyed the transfer to new surroundings and everywhere she moved, although her belongings were simple, she made a kind of charm about the place. Pleasant colors, comfort, something warm and welcoming and intimate; pictures of all the children and grandchildren, small personal objects, so that her room always looked unmistakably like her.

During these late years, also, she was absorbed in her pet charity. She used to say that she couldn't bear to think of cold babies, and every dollar that could be spared from her slender income was spent to buy material which she, herself, made up into warm little nightgowns and wrappers and dresses for poor babies. On the day she died with, for her, a blessed suddenness, a half-dozen of these garments were left unfinished beside her sewing machine and, on the worn cutting-board, a half-finished game of solitaire, which was one of her few diversions. Leaving them so, she walked down across the Vineyard to her daughter Alice's house, entered, perhaps called a name. That was the end.

If, as well as fine descendants, the memory of love given and received is our posterity, my mother still has a life in the world, for I shall never forget her or cease to love her.

The leaders of the meetings were changed from time to time. I especially remember Mr. Frank Wayland-Smith as a very charming and interesting leader. There were also Mr. Pitt and Mr. Charles Joslyn, both able but rather awesome. Dr. Cragin was good at news reports and, especially as a reader, Mr. Underwood was also popular. Whoever was leader sat at one side of a tall, well-lighted reading table placed on the hall floor in front of the stage. Mr. Noyes, if present, sat on the other side of the table, his chair being placed on a low platform.

In the body of the hall, well-lighted by numerous bracket lamps affixed to the sides of the balcony, stood several rows of the stencilled settees which we have with us today. The seats were cushioned in green rep, but the backs were bare and as uncomfortable as they still are. Some Puritanical-minded cabinet maker who made them must have considered "mortification of the flesh" as being good for the soul.

Thinking of the meetings reminds me of an amusing incident related to them which occurred many years later, long after the old O.C. had been succeeded by the present Company. There must have been a time, now dim in my mind, when the original green cushions became too shabby for use, and were discarded, and so, for some years, the "benches" as we called them, went bare and we endured their discomfort without complaint. Then one day, at the close of formal Company Stockholders' Meeting, one of the surviving old members, Aunt Neelie (Mrs. Cornelia Wayland-Smith) rose

with fire in her eye and said, "I think it is a shame to ask people to come to this hall for meetings or entertainments and expect them to sit on these abominable benches. I, therefore, move that this meeting vote to have them comfortably cushioned at once." Everyone sat for a moment stunned at her daring, then burst into laughter and hearty applause and the vote was passed unanimously. Soon after, the present red cushions appeared and have brought comparative ease as well as providing impromptu sleds for riotous groups of our children and grandchildren, who always have and probably always will play, unauthorized but happy, in the Big Hall. One of these days the present cushions will have to be renewed but on what generation will the duty fall, to my children's or my children's children? I shall be interested to note from some adjoining sphere.

I have put more emphasis than I should, perhaps, on the hall benches, for there were redeeming features in the other furnishings of the room. Under the balconies at each side were many rows of comfortable, cane-seated arm-chairs and rockers and, before meeting time, the benches always were pushed out of the way and eight to ten small pedestal tables, with octagon tops homemade, I fancy - were brought out and conveniently placed. Chairs could be drawn up to them, and the women who always brought their mending or knitting to meeting, could avail themselves of the light given out by the green shaded glass kerosene lamps which stood on each table.

Around these tables there would be at least four or five women, making the most of the opportunity to do a humdrum weekly stint of mending or darning while being entertained by the evening's program. And what a friendly homey touch it gave to the scene.

I don't think I have mentioned the way in which the men's clothes were cared for, in this almost wifeless society. To each woman was allotted the care of the clothes of from one to three men, according to her ability and leisure.

Each week the men would collect their freshly laundried clothes from the Distributing Room in the cellar, take them to the room of the woman appointed and, receive in return a pile of nicely mended garments. As there might be buttons to be sewed on or rips or tears in a suit to be repaired, much of her spare time might be used up in the work, hence the eagerness with which the women looked forward to Big Meeting and the chance to get the darning done while listening, perhaps to David Copperfield, Innocents Abroad, or some novel just being talked about in the journals.

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That was one of the remarkable things those Guiding Spirits did. They discovered latent talent and gave it a chance to develop. Think what a kindling thought that must have been to everyone with a spark of ambition.

In those days, when my Grandmother play-acted, the Community was too poor to buy instruments for a band as they did later, so that they must have had to rely, for music, on singing and, for accompaniment, on an old harmonium brought, doubtless, by some early joiner. The songs they sang, I presume, were mostly of the type found in The Franklin Square Collection:

Long, Long Ago, The Old Oaken Bucket, Far Away or Listen to the Mocking Bird, when they were feeling light-hearted. When in serious mood, they sang from The Plymouth Hymnal and the Moody and Sankey Hymn Book.
Later, when the Treasury could stand the expense of instruments, the idea of a band was discussed and approved. From that time until the end of the Community, not only did a band come into being but also an orchestra, and a square piano was purchased for the Big Hall. Who were the teachers on the various instruments? I do not know. Probably, at first, it was largely a matter of self-teaching from instruction books, and the practicing must have been done in the evenings, in order not to interfere with the daily work, but enthusiasm ran high and was felt by the entire family. J.H.N., who hadn't a wisp of musical talent, took up the Second Violin for a while, and the furor for the orchestra was so great that his distressing, off-key mutterings were tolerated with a smile, so my mother told me.

After a time, I think, the band must have been discontinued, for during my childhood I remember only the orchestra, a small one of perhaps a dozen or fifteen pieces, sometimes with Mr. Charles joslyn as leader. I have heard that he was mostly responsible for selecting the music which was not too difficult for a group with so little musical training and background. My remembrance is of overtures and selections from the operas, though they undoubtedly played popular pieces as well.

But music, while holding first place on the entertainment program, didn't

dampen the Community's interest in the stage. Evidently their budding actors and actresses were clamoring to be heard, and they set their goals high - Shakespeare, no less. They produced Merry Wives of Windsor, with Leonard Dunn, the dentist, as Falstaff and an outstanding one he made, Merchant of Venice, with Mrs. Helen Noyes as a commanding Portia and Mr. Van Velzer, our shy little cobbler, as Shylock. It must have been the big moment of his life, for I always heard that he played the part in a masterly manner.

Then there were tableaux, great favorites, since those who had beauty but could not act could yet know the joys of the lime-light for a brief period. One of the most aspiring tableaux I remember was called Cleopatra's Barge. The carpenters and painters had produced from a drawing the semblance of a royal barge which, being set up on the stage, was then filled with six of our most beautiful girls dressed in fluffy, white tarlatan, their short hair covered with wigs of jute ringlettes. Mrs. Helen Noyes, at least a mature forty, as Cleopatra, in regal robes of white, sat on a dais in the gilded prow. It was a breathtaking sight for the whole audience. We knew nothing about period costuming, so this Community version of oriental splendor was all and more than we had ever dreamed.

There was one other tableau which left an impression on me, young as I was, which I shall never forget. It was given one evening at the end of a musical program. The family knew that a tableau was to follow but did not know what it was to be, so were greatly surprised when the lights were slowly extinguished, leaving the room in absolute darkness. Whispering had ceased. Not a sound was to be heard.

The proscenium curtain was then raised and there on the stage, standing in a flood of soft light from above, stood Miss Charlotte, robed in white, hair flowing to her shoulders, looking lovelier than I had ever seen her. By some unseen mechanism, a small section of the floor on which she stood, then began to ascend until she seemed to float halfway between the lower region of darkness and the realm of light above. Then with face uplifted, she sang that hauntingly beautiful, mystical old and Spanish Hymn.

Then the curtain was lowered. I do not remember what followed. I like to think that people went quietly to their rooms, one by one, to think over the burden of that song.

Very wisely the Home Entertainment Program was never allowed to flag. As time went on, the Children's part was given more importance and especially were they drilled to sing and act at concerts given before the summer excursionists who, at one time, made a visit to the Oneida Community their Mecca. How much morbid curiousity prompted their choice of a picnicking ground, I do not know, but the hearty welcome they received must have done much to counteract any idle gossip they may have heard, and the appearance of such a group of happy, healthy intelligent children might have set inquiring minds wondering what the O.C. system of child training could be, to produce such results.

Great pains were taken with the children's part of the program. We were carefully drilled in the acting as well as the singing, and our clothes were given particular attention, the girls wearing white dresses and red slippers, the boys wearing pants and jackets and dark blue slippers. We always galloped on to the stage to music, a boy and girl taking hands together, then separating and forming a line across the front of the stage. It was great fun, and the children enjoyed it as much as the grown-ups.

I also remember that after we had been drilled for a week by Mrs. New-house in the balance-step, to be used in the "Shashy de shashy" (chausee de chausee), in the square dances, Mother came in to teach us the schottische. The big folks had learned the waltz, schottische and the polka by that time and, a gifted few, the redowa, a rather complicated step.

As I go into the past, memories of those concerts rise in my mind quite surprisingly. One morning lately, on waking, the songs our two comic singers used to give came vividly before me. I can remember only one verse of each of the two favorites, but they should be recorded. I only wish I could record the applause they always received.

Mr. Milford Newhouse was an amusing person offstage and could tell a story with so droll a wit he would always have his listeners in gales of laughter. Naturally, he was wanted on the concert program to relieve highbrow tension, but the man had no voice. He had an ear, though, could carry a tune very well and had an unabashed stage presence. He also had an instinct for selecting the songs he could dramatize.

The one I remember was Don't Wake the Baby, the story of a proud and

anxious father, told in a musical setting. Mr. Milford, coming before an audience already prepared to be highly amused, would take out a large, white handkerchief, fold it elaborately into an oblong roll which he would cradle tenderly in his left arm, his right hand patting it in time to the music. Then with his body swaying slightly, he would sing the song in his funny falsetto, finishing each verse with the refrain:

Mr. George Hamilton would enter limping, his right hand clutching his right thigh, then tell the story in song, of his accident. It began:

My mother, Alice Ackley, was reckoned at one time as the prima donna in voice and beauty. Harriet Worden also had a fine voice and much beauty. Then came the younger set: among the women, Lily Hobart, with a very sweet voice and most unusual dramatic talent, and Marion Bumbam with a good voice and a very attractive personality. Our stars among the men were Abram Burt with his fine, sympathetic tenor, Charles Burt, a fair baritone, and Mr. Henry Burnham, a good basso. The solo violinist was Frank Wayland-Smith. He had great talent and, could he have had more

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teaching and time for practice, he might have gone far. Mr. De Latre, a good flautist and Dr. Cragin, the cellist, were often on the program. With the orchestra, our solo players and singers, our musical fare was nicely varied.
On the whole, the home audience was very appreciative. Those who had no musical taste or training were in process of learning to know and like good music. It was one of the fine, cultural assets of the Community.

An amusing story was told of Mrs. Skinner, whose high intelligence didn't run to music. There was a concert about to be given to a train load of excursionists. The place was inundated with visitors and much excitement was abroad. The program, though carefully selected, was found at the last minute to be too long. Then Mrs. Skinner had a bright idea. She told Frank Wayland-Smith to play his elaborate solo twice as fast as the tempo called for! Outraged artistry was swallowed up by merriment, and a shorter piece was substituted.

Aside from mentioning briefly a play which was produced toward the end of the 70's, The Doctor of Alcantara, in which Dr. Noyes, quite fittingly, played the Doctor and which was only a mild success, I must devote myself now to my memories of H.M.S. Pinafore, the great dramatic achievement of all our artists' dreams.

Whose idea was it, I wonder? I wish I knew. It was a brave and aspiring one, anyway, and deserved the success such daring sometimes reaps, for, reviewing all the possible talent among the Community members, I can think of only two or three who had both adequate voice and sufficient dramatic talent for the parts.

The outstanding star, of course, was Lily Hobart, who sang the part of Josephine, the Captain's daughter. She had beauty, a lovely voice and was a born actress. Next came Marion Burnham who had a fine voice but, though she lacked beauty, was very attractive and acted the part of Little Buttercup very well. Charles Burt, as Captain Corcoran, had a fairly good baritone and his acting was passable, but Abram Burt as Ralph Rackstraw was a sad misfit.

He had a good tenor voice and could take the high notes with ease, but as a romantic lover well, one wanted to close one's eyes. Charles Marks, a quite handsome youth with a good tenor, was chosen first for the part but found he hadn't sufficient range to sing the music and so - Abram did his simple best and, with the super talent of his Josephine, made the part acceptable to an uncritical audience. However unromantic the singer, the pathos of "Farewell, My Own, Light of My Life, Farewell," became high tragedy, at least to a seven-year-old.

I don't know how many times the operetta was given for the home folks but, encouraged by this home experience and the praise of their friends,

the company dared to try out their luck in three small neighboring towns, charging admission, I believe. Evidently it did not pay, for the idea was carried no further and, with the unrest at home making itself felt at that time, the O.C. opera season was definitely over.

I cannot close the chapter on Home Entertainment without telling of the happy part dancing played in it. Amazingly, in view of the mores of the period, there were in the Community no moral or religious scruples against dancing nor against card playing, and yet many of the members must have come from homes where both were considered "wiles of the devil." The religion of Father Noyes naturally did away with all senseless taboos, against pleasure as well as against superstition. Now I think of it, I never heard the word superstition mentioned nor saw any of its observances until we left the Community. Nobody was afraid of black cats nor afraid of walking under a ladder. Nobody was frightened if he broke a mirror and nobody "knocked on wood" to protect himself from boasting.

Card-playing never held the attention of many of the members. Euchre and Whist were enjoyed by the competitive few but dancing was enjoyed by young and old alike and the dance held every two weeks in the Big Hall, to the music of our home orchestra, was an occasion never willingly missed by any member. Square dances were the popular favorites and one would find the most unlikely people suddenly becoming as frisky as young colts. Old Mr. Inslee, our highly-valued machine expert, would find in little old Aunt Betsy Whitfield a kindred spirit and, beaming with happiness, they would go through all the changes of the Lancers without a single mistake. Even elderly, ponderous Mr. Clark never failed to "make up a set" and his partner would feel greatly honored, since it was generally agreed that he kept perfect time and was very light on his feet. In his youth he was probably a gay blade and love of the dance was in his blood.

The square dances, however, were not our only pleasure. The Virginia Reel was great fun and the Spanish Dance, a combination of some changes from the square dances and a few measures of the waltz was quite a pretty dance. For the young, the waltz, schottische and polka were beginning to take most of their interest and before long the square dance appeared only once or twice to please the old people.

Who, I wonder, was responsible for these expanding ideas? It must have come through wider reading of the doings of the outside world. The library subscribed to several illustrated magazines, Frank Leslies, Harpers Weekly and Harpers Monthly, which might have had a worldly influence, though there were plenty of monthlies of the more solid sort. The Atlantic, The Forum, The North American Review and Scientific American were never sullied by even a line drawing or map, nor a word of advertising.

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In the early days discipline was much too rigid, I always heard, but in my childhood a milder attitude had supervened and we heard little of punishment. Good children didn't have to be punished and, if we were being properly taught, why shouldn't we be good? "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." The same idea was proved in our health. If we were properly cared for we would be healthy and we were.

In my day there were two Community doctors, Dr. Theodore Noyes and Dr. George Cragin. The decision that these men should study medicine must have been a decree of the Central Committee as neither of them, I am sure, would have chosen to be practicing physicians had their taste been consulted. Dr. Cragin told me, many years later, that he would have much preferred to be a civil engineer and Dr. Noyes, while he doubtless enjoyed theorizing about the human body as he enjoyed any intellectual problem never enjoyed the actual practice of medicine. After his return from Yale, where the men went for their medical training, he turned his attention largely to the Dansville Sanitarium system of diet and hydrotherapy. However, both men met the family needs, though I never remember either of them having an office in the house or hours for consultation and the nearest we ever came to a pharmacy was the old medicine cupboard kept, during my youth, by Aunt Sarah Dunn.

In this cupboard were kept castor-oil, cascara, arnica, Rochelle and Epsom salts, ippecac, porus-plasters, Trask's ointment, laudanum, wormwood and sulphur. Probably even others which I do not remember but enough to give quite a range to those who liked home-doctoring.

Two never-to-be-forgotten doses were wormwood and sulphur and molasses. Every spring the children would be lined up in the South Room and given a dose of wormwood tea and, a week or two later, a large spoonful of sulphur and molasses. The wormwood tea is self explanatory. The sulphur and molasses was supposed to cleanse the blood after a winter without fresh fruit or vegetables. The wormwood was very bitter and the sulphur and molasses quite gritty but with all the children watching no one dared to make a fuss. In case of sore throat, dry sulphur was blown into the throat through a glass tube.

Actual sickness was seldom in evidence. Occasionally there would be an epidemic of measles, chicken-pox, mumps or pink-eye and then the chil

dren who had had the disease and were immune, felt as if left out of a party, for there were often delicacies the convalescents were given which the healthy seldom tasted.

Whenever there was a case of serious illness or childbirth an Oneida doctor was called and there were a few women, known to have a special talent for nursing, who were always put in charge. Aunt Sarah Dunn was a particularly fine nurse. She seemed to have special intuition for diagnosis and what the immediate treatment should be, and she inspired courage and confidence in the patient at once. Mrs. Sears, I have heard, was an excellent midwife. Aunt Charlotte Reid had a special faculty with children, being patient, wise and kind.

In case of emergency such as an epidemic, any woman or man in the Community was glad to be called on to help, and often new talent would be discovered. My mother, though she had never had scarlet fever herself, nor had any experience with it, was put in sole charge of one child victim, day and night, and brought it through successfully. If the health department seems rather less organized than many of the branches of the Community, it must be remembered that though there was a recognition of the value of medicine, there was always a strong belief, by many, in the power of prayer and faith healing.

In the early days, faith in Divine Healing was but the logical result of a firm belief in the miracles of the Bible and I have heard that Mr. Noyes was able, as a channel of the Divine Power, to restore Miss Mehetibel Hall to health after years of invalidism and, after losing three of the Clark children in an epidemic of diphtheria, by resorting to prayer and cracked ice the epidemic was brought to an end. Later for some reason I never knew, they gave up sole reliance on God and used medicine when deemed necessary, although invoking His power as an ally.

Sickness among those in active life was rare, I should say. Occasionally we would hear that someone had "fever 'n ague" brought on from Walling-ford, which was always rife with it, but on the whole, sickness was seldom in evidence and I remember but one death occurring among the young. That was the death of beautiful Edith Waters, who died of consumption in nearby Verona Springs, where she had gone hoping for a cure. Even to us young children had come the story of her love affair with handsome, attractive Mr. Charlie and the suppression of such a notable case of "special love" was supposed by many to be the cause of her death rather than the true malady.

At the time it must have been decided that it was well for the children to know something of man's inevitable end for the children were allowed to look on that lovely face before the funeral service which we did not at

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tend. To me, it was quite a shock, since up to that time I must have forgotten Aunt Chloe's baby I had thought everyone lived to be a hundred, and my life seemed secure for years to come. Now, it was all different but, luckily, unhappy thoughts do not last long in childhood.

To us children even people of fifty seemed quite old and, by that reckoning there were many old people in the Community, the young-old and the old-old. The young-old took care of themselves nicely, but the old-old were given the same cheerful and tender care given the children, and apparently they were never considered a burden. They were kept clean and as attractive as possible. Meals were carried to them in a basket if they were unable to walk to the dining room and their rooms were usually situated adjoining either the Upper or Lower Sitting Room, thus giving them the benefit of those big sunny rooms to sit in and the opportunity to widen their horizon by meeting younger people who happened in.

One of the old ladies had completely lost her mind and was of great interest to the children whenever they happened to see her. She was always called Old Aunt Jane, because there was a younger Aunt Jane, and she occupied a room off the Upper Sitting Room. Every day after being dressed she was placed in a nicely cushioned rocker by one of the sunny windows and there she would sit by the hour, never speaking, hardly stirring save to fold and unfold her handkerchief. I have a ridiculous memory in connection with this poor woman, and one which still pricks my conscience. It happened that one day Josephine and I, finding Old Aunt Jane alone, in her usual chair, were inspired to see if we could get her attention. After some consultation we decided on what seemed a brilliant plan. We got down on our hands and knees and crept up to her, barking loudly like dogs. It brought a frightening response. She uttered a pitiful cry and put out her hands to fend us off.

By this time Josephine and I were so ashamed of our bright idea that we got up and ran away as quickly as possible thanking heaven that no one had seen us and that Old Aunt Jane could never tell of our wickedness. Had we been found out, punishment would surely have followed since respect for old people was taught us early and always insisted upon.

The most memorable of the old men was Mr. Perkins who was badly palsied. He was given the job of testing chains in the chain room. It was fascinating to us children to watch him missing the hook at which he aimed time after time but always persisting and always accomplishing his stint in the end. We children were often reprimanded by Papa Kelly for making false motions when making chains. It was a very bad habit we were told, and in Mr. Perkins we could see the sad, sad end to which the maker of false motions could possibly arrive. Fortunately there was a story we were

told later which greatly lessened our fears. The children's version was that in his youth Mr. Perkins was asked by his younger brother to go with him to a nearby pond to see him swim, which the boy had just learned to do. Very soon, whether through fear or cramp, the swimmer began to sink and called loudly for help. It was at this point that Mr. Perkins, who couldn't swim himself, simply walked on the water, like Peter in the Bible, and saved his brother's life. The boy was brought safely to land but poor Mr. Perkins, his faith unused to such a strain, was left a nervous wreck for evermore.
 

It happened that J.H.N. had established himself in Ithaca at the time, feeling that a center in Mid New York State would be an advantageous place from which to publish his journal, The Witness, and it was from Ithaca that he wrote David Harrison, a special friend and follower, a letter stating his very advanced views on marriage, leaving it to Harrison to judge whether it be shown to others. Harrison kept the letter for months before he dared show it to anyone alse. Finally he decided to send it to Simon Lovett, a close friend, first extracting a promise it should go no further. Lovett, however, who heartily approved Noyes' views, could not refrain from passing it on to Elizabeth Hawley, a young fire-brand of his acquaintance and she, carried away by the new gospel, insisted it be sent to Theophilus Gates of Philadelphia, owner and publisher of the Battle Axe, a new and very radical news-sheet.

And so the great, the revolutionary idea, was launched through no effort of Noyes' own. He had not thought the time was ripe to announce it to the world but under the circumstances he was forced to come forward as the author and sponsor of the letter, which he did with courage and strong conviction.

Though I have not been able to find further information concerning Miss Hawley's activities in promoting the new Truth she had so valiantly espoused, she must have been a strong supporter in some one of the various small groups of Perfectionists which had sprung up in New England and she was an early joiner of the rapidly growing Community at Oneida.

In my day she had become Aunt Elizabeth to the young people and was a rather odd but always interesting personality. She was quite short and

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not impressive physically in face or figure but there were always certain oddities in her dresses, which she made herself, a shrewd look in her bluegray eyes and a determined expression to her mouth and chin which showed one quickly she was an incurably independent character, one to be reckoned with.

What particular function she filled in the early days I do not know. Not one that carried any continuous responsibility, I am sure, as she was too erratic, too inorganic, undesirable qualities in an organization where obedience was necessary. However, she went her way seemingly undisturbed, even by criticism, choosing whatever work she wished to do and it seemed to be tacitly understood that argument about it was useless and to be avoided.

Sometimes it would suit her fancy to braid palm-leaf hats, at one time one of the minor industries of the Community. Sometimes she would devote herself to making scrapbooks for the children, which she considered important in those days of few illustrated books for children.

Her real passion was for flowers and she was an indefatigable gardener. Although, in her later years, after the Break-up, she became an enthusiastic disciple and correspondent of Dr. Totten of Yale, who was putting forth the theory that the English race was one of the lost ten tribes of Israel, she was still an ardent supporter of the doctrines of J.H.N. I suspect, however, that she reserved her own opinion as to his complete inspiration, since I once heard her say, "Yes, he was a great man, a wonderful man, but I never went near enough to see the brush marks."

After that utterance she turned away with the low amused chuckle so characteristic of her when she thought she had scored a point.

But as the years passed, she no longer felt controversial. As her strength declined she had to be moved down from her third floor room to a room on the second floor where she could be waited on more easily. Fortunately, too, for in her 91st year she fell and broke her hip.

In those days, before modern surgery, such an accident was very serious. An old person was not expected to live, much less to walk again. But such ideas were not accepted by Aunt Elizabeth. She had had "an inner witness," she told her friends, that she would both live and walk and walk she did, with only a cane for support until her 96th year. If one asked her how she felt she would say, "Don't ask me how I feel. Ask me how I do. I am doing well." What better epitaph could she have than that?

But why, you may ask, have I written very little about the active men and women of the O.C. outside my own family, and the people who cared for us children and a few eccentrics?

I wish I could tell more about the important members, those who were

responsible for managing the various departments or held professional positions. But on thinking the matter over I realize how little I actually knew about them. We felt their influence, however. There was always a general atmosphere of youth and vitality among them. They always seemed bent on important business matters but happily so. They never seemed worried. The whole atmosphere seemed serene, one of faith in God's approval of their lives and aims, and it never occurred to me that the Oneida Community would not go on forever.

In those days children were still supposed to be "seen but not heard," when with their elders. I could and did admire a few grownups from afar; Mr. Frank when he played his violin so beautifully, and his accompanist, Miss Tirzah, with her amazingly nimble fingers; Henry Hunter's playing of the clarinet in the orchestra and Miss Lily's sweet voice and lovely complexion when she sang on the stage. But the children's association with the older people in charge of running the affairs of the O.C. was practically nil. We knew their names, and we knew they felt kindly toward us, but that was the extent of the acquaintance.

There was nothing about them or their occupation to excite our interest, whereas Old Mr. Perry, who, it was rumored among the children, had no stomach and certainly he looked it, buttoned up so tightly in his black Prince Albert coat, was an object for frequent discussion. We almost envied him when we saw the delicious eggnogs sent up to him so regularly with his dinner.

Then there were the old ladies, so old they were allowed to wear the long dresses and the lovely swaying hoop skirts of their youth and, instead of short hair wore black wigs neatly parted in front, the back covered by a thick beribboned net. Whether because of age or their regal dress, several of these women were called "Lady." There was Lady Joslyn who wore barrel-hoops and Lady Norton and Lady Allen and one other, Lady Thayer, who wore a wig and net but a short dress and so had none of the swaying graces of a "lady" yet Lady she was called. I think her title must have been conferred because of the dominating vigor she displayed at an advanced age. It had to be recognized in some way.

And what a haven the Community was for old people, those who had joined probably in their thirties or forties and had given many years of honest work to the society so had earned a release from heavy labor. To keep them happy, light occupation was found for all those who wished it. Knitting, mending and silk-tying for the old women. Light kitchen work, apple-paring and the preparation of vegetables for the family table for the old men. They were humdrum duties but when done in company with others and in pleasant conditions, there was a happy social flavor about

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them not to be found in the isolated farm houses those people had probably come from.

When old people reached the stage where they needed constant care some qualified person was appointed to look after them, often a man or woman near their own age but still strong enough to keep up a high standard of care for the patient's person, clothes and room. Friends would drop in frequently to see them, bringing news of the family life and so their days would pass peacefully to the end.
 

This was a bit over my head at the time but before long Wallingford became for me a real place. One day I happened to see a trunk being unpacked by a person who had just come from there and had brought with him several large golden apples, each with a note attached to it by a large pin.

They looked like apples but they were quite hard, rather fuzzy and had a most delicious smell, quite unlike any apples I had ever seen before. When I asked what kind of apples they were through my Grandpa I knew quite a little about apples - I was told these were quinces, which could not be grown at Oneida because it was too cold. They grew well at Wallingford, however, so our people there would often send them in the fall, as a loving remembrance to friends at Oneida. They were delicious, baked and served with cream.

Soon after that, Wallingford began to have a more important interest for me. My precious Grandma was sent there to help in some domestic capacity, I believe, and before very long I was told I might go and stay with her for a while. That was my first experience in travel. Nice Aunt Sarah Johnson, who later became my teacher, and Miss Jane Abbot, one of the Children's House Mothers, were going to Wallingford for a change and I was to go with them. It was an unforgettable journey.

Aunt Sarah was kind, loved children and they felt it, but Miss Jane -never "Aunt Jane"- was the martinet type and was one of the quite permanent Children's House Mothers. She was the one who saw to it that the

children were kept clean, went to their meals and bed on time, were properly dressed when they went outdoors, were prompt in attendance at five o clock meeting and were obedient and respectful. The children obeyed her, not from love but through fear of her severity. She seldom spanked but sometimes used the back of a hairbrush on the hand. When Aunt Sarah took your hand in her soft, gentle palm, it was a hand-clasp. When Miss Jane took your hand in her thin, hard one, to hurry you along, it was a hand-grasp and you'd better not hang back. She was in charge of the journey to Wallingford.

We went from Oneida to Albany by train arriving just in time to catch the Hudson River night boat. I remember but little of the first part of the trip save feeling very homesick and longing for my mother, but the scene on the badly-lighted dock in Albany, the gleam of lights on that black and menacing river has stayed with me through the years. Our cabin was tiny - barely room for us and our modest amount of luggage.

Miss Jane was small, so I had to sleep with her in the lower berth, perhaps because if I crowded her out she wouldn't have so far to fall. This arrangement, however, obliged Aunt Sarah, who was very stout, to climb up a shaky ladder to the upper berth. I watched the proceeding, my heart in my mouth, and heard her bed creak and groan as she settled into it. Then I was helped to undress, told to get into the lower berth and lie as close to the wall as possible. Miss Jane followed, excluding all light and air.

How frightened I was! Never having traveled by boat before, I didn't know that even the best of them creak and strain frequently, so that every time I heard those strange boat noises I thought Aunt Sarah was about to descend on us and, though I trusted her kindness usually, I was sure she was bound to crush Miss Jane and me flat as a pancake before morning. Luckily I was too sleepy and tired to lie awake long and in no time, it seemed, it was morning and we waked unharmed and at the dock in New York.

We must have breakfasted somewhere I suppose, then transferred to a train and the next thing I knew I was at that mythical place called Walling-ford and in my precious Grandmother's arms, all fears forgotten.

There was just time before the twelve o'clock dinner to be shown around the house which seemed pretty small compared with the Mansion at Oneida but there was the same big family atmosphere and I was soon feeling at home. Fortunately there were three other children there at the time -Humphrey, Theodore and Agnes, I think - and after dinner I was told I could go with them to the playroom which was located in the printing office, as the printing establishment adjacent to the Big House was called.

The "printing office" was really a fair-sized building which housed the printing of the Circular and all Community publications. The printers

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 could doubtless have used all the space for their business, but the children's welfare always came first in domestic considerations, and a large, well-lighted room on the first floor of the printing office was allotted for the children's use. It was here we spent most of our time when not outdoors.

It was plainly furnished, following the custom at Oneida, but had a nice smooth hardwood floor, so essential to active play, and, an innovation, some small low cupboards arranged around the wall for the children's special use. It is the memory of those cupboards that brings to mind a tragic incident - that is, as a child knows tragedy.

When I left Oneida my mother had given me a present, all carefully wrapped and not to be opened till I reached Wallingford. I am sure it was Mother's idea that this gift might tide me over a very probable touch of homesickness. I knew nothing of that, however, and my one thought after dinner was to get Grandma to unpack my bag so I could see my present. Presents were rare in those days. Luckily it lay on top of my clothing and in a trice I had taken off the wrapping paper and there lay a candy rose, as large as a real rose but in has-relief. The back of it was flat, just plain white candy, but on the upper side there were lovely curved pink petals with a center of green and a short green stem.

I had never had anything so lovely in all my life, I thought. I wanted to show it at once to the children, so I wrapped it carefully and went downstairs to meet them, carrying it very importantly in my hand. I said nothing about it and they were too polite to ask immediately what it was, but on entering the playroom I was told at once which was my cupboard and that I could put my things in it. I could keep my delight no longer to myself, so I undid the paper and displayed that beautiful rose.

They were all as overcome by its beauty as I was and there were Oh's and Ah's aplenty, but it was candy, after all, and just as I was about to put it into my cupboard for safe-keeping one bold spirit blurted out, "But, aren't you going to share?"

"Oh," I said, "It's too pretty to eat." This was not at all the general sentiment, and my remark was met by silence and sour looks. Then a bright thought struck one of the children. "Couldn't we just lick the back of it? It wouldn't hurt it." Our mouths were all watering by that time and it seemed quite feasible, so I unwrapped my rose and passed it around, dire apprehension in my heart. Those licks were long and loving but by the time it reached me I couldn't see that the lovely rose had suffered. It was just as pink and perfect as when I got it, so I dared to take my turn at licking, then wrapped it again carefully and shut it in my cupboard, hoping it might be forgotten. But, of course, it wasn't. That lick simply whetted the appetite of the candy-hungry children and I was very overtly given prefer-

ence in all the games we played, even though a neighbor's little daughter had been asked in to play with us.

We built block houses, looked at picture books and, best of all, raced marbles, starting them from the top of the big, zigzag marble-roller and racing them the entire length of the room.

In about a half hour little Martha, the neighbor's daughter, said she must go home. Her mother had said not to stay long. We were so engrossed in play by that time that we called out a brief goodbye over our shoulders and went on with the game, secretly glad I think, that there was one less mouth to feed.

Finally even marble racing palled and memories of that sweet, sweet rose came to us all. I couldn't bring myself to offer it again but I didn't have to. It was suggested in a loud, enthusiastic tone by Humphrey, "Let's have another lick on the rose." The others all joined in and I could not deny them, though my heart sank. Could that loveliness stand another round of licks unharmed? But it had to be tried.

I was escorted to my cupboard with deference and with reluctance opened the door on a bare shelf. Not a vestige of that lovely rose was left. It was gone Gone!

We children had been brought up on the Ten Commandments and knew what a dreadful sin stealing was, but it was an ugly word, never referred to save as "taking-what-doesn't-belong-to-you-without-asking." That was considered as definition enough yet avoided that hope-destroying word.

So we didn't say Martha had stolen the rose although we knew she had. And even if we had called her a robber, thief wasn't in our vocabulary either, nothing we could have called her would bring back my lovely, lovely rose. But never, never again would we play with little Martha, child of perdition.

There are only two other incidents that stand out clearly in my four-year old memory of that first visit to Wallingford. The children realizing, I suppose, that Wallingford didn't offer the varied facilities for play that Oneida did, did their best to find for me interesting things to see or do. One of the most exciting things in the place, they said, was Mr. Charlie's Mustang, but the barn was out of hounds and they could not take me there. That word Mustang, such a nice word, whetted my curiosity.

I wanted very much to see it, so when one morning Mr. Charlie - he was my Uncle Charlie - asked me if I would like to go with him to the barn, my joy knew no bounds. And what a beautiful creature that horse was! It was not large but of perfect build and had a coat the color and sheen of a ripe chestnut, while the forelock, mane and tail were black, the tail almost reaching the ground.

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Uncle Charlie had me stand well outside the stall while he fed the Mustang an apple. Then he picked me up in his arms and let me pat the horse's satin-smooth neck which it seemed to like, as it turned its head toward me with a whinney and a very friendly look.

I was then told by Uncle Charlie to go outside while he fixed the head-stall and I started to obey but I was fascinated by that long, black tail, so, unseen, slipped back into the stall and took the end of the beautiful tail up in my hands. I must have handled it very gently for nothing happened until Uncle Charlie, turning, saw me. Then, with one swift stride and without a sound, he snatched me up in his arms and stepped out of the stall. His face was awfully white and his voice sounded trembly but he didn't scold.

All he said was, "Don't you know, child, that you must never go behind a horse's heels? He might have kicked you." "But he didn't," I said. "He likes me.

"Yes, he must," Uncle Charlie said. He didn't mention Guardian Angels but I am sure he saluted them and gave silent thanks. All the way to the house he held my hand close in his, although he didn't say a word nor did I.

I might have thought I had gravely displeased him, since he never asked me again to go to see the Mustang but whenever I saw him riding by, looking so handsome and happy, he would wave his hand at me and I felt we were still friends.

In thinking over my visit to Wallingford and trying to place my age by the kind of things I remembered, one simple touching incident comes to my mind showing the child's early and instinctive trust in the goodness of God.

One lovely sunny day soon after I arrived, the children said, "Let's go and see where Miss Chloe's baby is buried." Miss Chloe's Baby! Had Miss Chloe had a baby of her own once? And it had died? Why, Miss Chloe was one of the mothers of the Children's House and the dearest She was always kind, never scolded even if you were naughty, could love you into being good and had so expressive a face and so lovely a voice that her storytelling was pure delight.

We children would sit quiet as mice for as long a time as she could give us, listening to her enchanting tales. Yes, of course, I wanted to see it, not that I really comprehended anything about it. So we started out playing "follow the leader" on the way and were soon led to a little footpath which wound up to a sunlit grove of slender oaks at the foot of Mt. Tom. This places the time of my visit in the fall, as the ground was covered with yellow leaves which we scuffed up into great heaps, then threw ourselves into them amid shouts of laughter.

We were so carried away with the fun we were having that we almost forgot the reason for our walk but soon Humphrey called us together and

led us to a secluded corner of the grove where there were a few graves with headstones, gray with age, and beyond them, next to the fence, to a little grave marked with a small stone, the grave of Miss Chloe's baby.

Suddenly we felt quite concerned about that little boy lying there all alone, taken away from his mother but not yet gone to heaven. Why was that? Yet God was our loving Father. We didn't question that.

We stood there quietly for several moments, then Humphrey said, "Now, if you will lay your head down on his grave you can hear his heart beat."

Solemnly and with unquestioning belief, we all took turns laying our heads down on that golden coverlet of leaves, certain that the faint rustling we heard was the baby's heart still beating.

"Yes, he's all safe," Humphrey said.

"Yes, all safe," we echoed. Then we went away, not saddened but feeling the baby was being tenderly cared for by good Mother Earth till God should call him home.

My second and last visit to Wallingford, two or three years later did not, for some reason, record nearly such vivid memories as that first one.

Perhaps that was because it occurred after the main Wallingford family had moved back to Oneida. Malaria, which followed the enlarging of the pond to provide water power for the spoon factory, as it was called, had taken a heavy toll of the Wallingford family. My uncle, Charlie Cragin, had died from it and the Central Committee decided to abandon the whole enterprise. The spoon business was to be moved to Niagara Falls and the Wallingford factory was sold to Maltby, Stevens & Curtis of Meriden, Conn. The machinery and raw materials were to be shipped to the new factory at Niagara Falls. To do this job, Mr. Daniel Kelly was sent to help Mr. Myron Kinsley who for some time had been running the spoon factory.

It is at this point that I come into the picture. After the big family had left for Oneida, someone was needed to keep house for the few men remaining there at Wallingford and my Grandmother Ackley had been the one chosen. I fancy she was rather homesick alone all day in the old house, so it was decided to send me out to keep her company for the rest of her stay. Mr. Kelly, being then en route to Wallingford, was elected to take me with him. As I remember it, Mr. Kelly, while being a very estimable man, was wholly unused to caring for children and seemed rather bored with the idea but had to consent.

We were to take the sleeper from Utica and my mother accompanied me as far as the Utica station. Though I wanted to see my grandma, I was leaving behind Mother, my sister Maggie and brother Bobbie, our new family home, my old playmates and the dear, familiar surroundings. By the time I reached the station I was already homesick and I dissolved in tears,

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begging mother to take me home. Community training came to the fore as usual. If it was best for all that I should go, go I must. It must have cost my mother a pang to send me away, weeping and disconsolate, but she was a good soldier. The whistle blew and I was hurried aboard the train.

It was soon bedtime, fortunately, and Mr. Kelly told me to take off my shoes, coat and hat. Then, still fully dressed, I was helped into an upper berth where, with my new doll Mother had just made me my first doll

hugged tight in my arms I was soon asleep. I must have forgotten my homesickness and slept soundly, too. In no time, it seemed to me, Mr. Kelly called me, told me to get ready, for we were pulling into Meriden. After that there was a six mile drive, but soon I was in Wallingford and in my grandma's arms.

This second visit proved rather dull for there were no children to play with except a little colored girl, child of Cindy, the colored cook who used to come in daily to help Grandma with the work. Cindy made all the bread and it was fun to watch her put her pink-palmed hands into the big pan of sponge, take out a double handfull, drop it onto the floured-board and by kneading with the heel of the hand, turning, folding again and again, a fascinating process, work it into the shape of a loaf just the size of her bread-pan into which she would tuck it as gently as you would lay a baby in its cradle. After this, of course, it must be set in a warm place to rise again, then be baked for a full hour. But what a reward would be yours if you happened into the kitchen when it was done, still warm, and sending forth its delectable aroma! Then Cindy would cut off an end crust for you, spread it generously with home-made butter and there you had food for the Gods.

My only outside amusement was following Mr. Birdsey Bristol while he did the work in the barn, milking the cow, feeding and currying the horse and oxen or plowing with those great rust-colored creatures, Buck and Berry, in a field near the house. Mr. Bristol was a man Millet would have loved to paint. He was big and brawny with a fine head rather sparsely covered with curly gray hair but there was no lack to his curly beard which sprangled out riotously all over his face. His nose was too large and acquiline to be subdued by his beard, but the dominant features were his eyes, large bright blue, observant and friendly, and his deep, resonant voice, which, when he sang out his gees and haws to the oxen, was a joy to hear. We became friends at once and I used to follow him about much of the time. He was such a nice member of the family, too, always looking around to see where he could help.

Another nice family member was Mr. Myron Kinsley my uncle. He was always kind and jolly and surprised us greatly one day by bringing in sweet Miss Jessie Baker whom I had known at Oneida. He had just met

her train in Meriden. Grandma didn't seem surprised, however, but welcomed her warmly as did all the others but why had she come? Grandma didn't need any more help. Next day Miss Jessie told me the reason. That very afternoon she was going to marry Uncle Myron in New Haven and she showed me her wedding dress, a dark green brocaded silk, very pretty, which she had made herself. She was a lovely young woman and would make a fine wife. Here was romance in full flower right before my eyes where I couldn't help but see it. This was very exciting but I was still somewhat homesick so I was glad that after a short time the house was closed and we were on the way home, all but Mr. Bristol whom I was sorry to leave.

It only remains for me to tell of the final end of the Wallingford Community buildings. They were large enough to accommodate a family of fifty, by no means beautiful and not easy to sell advantageously. For this reason Mr. S. R. Leonard, Sr. was sent from Oneida to act as caretaker and to relay any promising bids. Not until two years later was a satisfactory offer made. This came from the Freemasons who wanted it for a home for their aged members. They would also have use for the farm, so it was sold to them and is still used by them for this purpose, thus maintaining its original purpose a communal home.
 

Why it was called the Drawing Room I have never known, but certainly that was its name and here all of us Community children spent the first year of our lives. In this room the babies were cared for from the time they left the nursery, at probably six months old, until they were thought advanced enough to go to the East Room.

The only other features I remember are the willow clothes baskets, two

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 or three of them, mounted on low-wheeled wooden platforms, with a long leather strap, to draw them by, fastened at one end. In these vehicles babies were drawn, instead of being carried from one room to another or, for a little change and amusement, taken for a ride up and down the hallways outside.

The East Room to which we graduated from the Drawing Room, was a large room, nearly square, with two windows facing east and a large bay window flanked by two smaller windows facing south. As in all of the rooms devoted to the children, the floors were bare, the walls white and bare save for a picture or two of childish interest. The most important pieces of furniture that stand out boldly in my mind are the big, round table at which the children ate and the high chairs in which they sat at table. And though furniture was scarce, it was sufficient since it was in this room that play first became active and exciting. There were, besides, other wooden chairs suited to children of different ages and one of the painted wooden settees, like those in the Big Hall.

Most outstanding among the playthings was Shocky, the great rocking horse given us by some interested visitors. Shocky was at least three feet high and four feet long, had a noble head with glowing hazel eyes and his body was covered with real horsehide of a pale tan color which, with his flowing pale blonde mane, tail and forelock, made him what today we would call a palomino. But his beauty was only part of our great delight, for on his back he had a red leather saddle with stirrups attached, on his head a head-stall with reins fastened to his bit and he was mounted on a tremendously strong, flat steel spring which was attached to a heavy wooden base, so that instead of teetering, he bounced. How he bounced! His forelegs curved as if he was about to rear. But he never did. Never a child was thrown off. T'was all pure joy. There was also the little green teeter, shaped like a crescent moon, with seats at both ends for the younger children to ride.

It was in this room we first knew the fun of marble rollers, an arrangement of grooved moldings made into hollow squares or zig-zags, down which we raced our gayly colored marbles. And blocks What a wealth of them, made of hard wood, smoothed beyond the possibility of a sliver and of many sizes.

Picture books began to be of interest, too, but in those days illustrated books were too rare to let little tots look at them by themselves, so two or three of the older women began to make scrap books on double sheets of heavy starched cotton or linen. Eyelets were set into one edge of each page and a dozen or more leaves were laced into heavy cardboard covers. The pictures were chosen with great care from old illustrated magazines, Harpers, Frank Leslie's, etc., but these were all black and white of course; so, to in

troduce color which children love, some one of the scrap-book makers - Aunt Elizabeth Hawley, I fancy - thought of the gorgeous labels used on the fruit and vegetable cans at the Fruit House, as our canning factory was always called, and so, richly scattered through the pages were pictures of beautiful red tomatoes, green peas and string beans, plums, cherries, pears and peaches. The homemade scrap books were great favorites.

As I look back on those days, I am impressed with the amount of time, thought and ingenuity the children's welfare and happiness commanded from men and women alike. The rearing of healthy, happy children was a major enterprise in the Oneida Community, and I am sure the Carpentry Department never felt it beneath them if called upon to make blocks, marble rollers, teeters, strong supports for swings or the winter platform which added an extra thrill to coasting on the South Hill.

Just beyond the South Room there was a West Room a small place used sometimes as a playroom, but its chief use was as a dressing room in which to put on and off outside clothing. This was also where you stood to have your hair brushed before meals and have your hand-and-face washing inspected, the children's sink room being just opposite.

At the age of six or seven we moved on from the East Room to the South Room, the goal of all childish ambitions. Here we really began to feel we were growing up. It was a large room about 30 feet long by 16 feet wide

with four large uncurtained windows facing south but since these windows were sheltered by the South Porch just outside, the room was a bit dark. However, at this age children spent so much of their time out of doors that this didn't matter when everything else was so right.

Here, as in all the children's rooms, there was a sensible austerity in the furnishing. The floor was uncarpeted as the children spent much of their time in floor games and rough and tumble squabbling. There was a large oak extension table between two of the front windows and a black leather-covered settee stood against the north wall. Hard wooden chairs enabled the children to work or play at the table and, on rainy days, the table would be surrounded by youngsters playing cards, checkers, dominoes or parchesi. At times, the rage might be for painting or crayoning or cutting out pictures and making scrapbooks.

There was never a dearth of interesting things to do when the weather was bad or darkness fell. For readers there was a tall bookcase filled with children's books and on dull days some house mother or father, noting mounting restlessness, would read some story aloud or, as a special treat, reverently take down the dancing dolls from their eyrie on top of the bookcase, wind them up and set them on the floor to waltz to their own music, the beautiful Blue Danube. What a delight they were! The lady doll was a

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lovely creature. She wore a large hoop skirt of white satin which nicely covered the music box and machinery. This was topped by a low-necked pink satin bodice, and her exquisite bisque head was crowned with an elaborate coiffure of blonde curls. Her partner was in full court attire, also; black satin knee-breeches, white silk hose, black satin pumps, a full-skirted satin coat of emerald green embroidered with gold thread, a ruffled lace waist-coat and on his powdered wig he wore a tricorne hat of black satin. These wonderfuld olls, like our precious Shocky, were a gift from an interested visitor, one who must have been an extensive traveller, since those lovely creatures must have come from abroad. Strange that they should have journeyed all that distance from an old culture to find a final resting place in such a unique home.

One other outstanding feature in the room that I feel must have had a foreign origin was the remarkably fine steel engraving, now hanging in the Library Annex, depicting the tragic experiences of Christian in Pilgrim's Progress from the moment he left his weeping wife and children at the gate to the city of Destruction, his burden of sins upon his back, until he arrives at the Celestial City and the shining effulgence of God's approval. I don't remember who ~rst read us the story and pointed out the various vicissitudes Christian encountered, but it preached a powerful sermon and brought us the idea of warfare with sin very early too early, I think.

However, it may have given added importance to the children's daily meeting held at five thirty. It was in this big South Room that we assembled every day for these meetings, all washed and brushed and ready for our supper which would follow. The smaller children sat in the front rows in the little oak arm-chairs designed and made in the Carpentry Shop. The larger children sat at the back of the room. Papa Kelly would then take over. First we were asked to sit very still for a few minutes to get a quiet spirit." Then Mr. Kelly would read verses from the New Testament, after which we would say the Lord's Prayer or the 23rd Psalm and then we were told to Confess Christ.

To the little ones it was just "fess Christ," and to me remained so for some time before I knew the whole formula: "I confess Christ a good Spirit in me." But though the younger ones didn't know the meaning of the words, in some subtle way it put us in communion with the Good Spirit and was one of the early sources of our spiritual life.

The Dansville people were, at that time, I believe, the great promoters of Grahamism. When the Doctor returned home from a visit there, he introduced to the family graham floor to be made into bread or used as a cereal:

mush, it was always called. After that, mush of several kinds was the great standby for the children's breakfast. Sometimes cut-up dates were added to the graham mush to make it more delicious. The oatmeal was coarse-ground, giving us something to chew on and thus benefiting both teeth and digestion. Farina was given us occasionally but graham and oatmeal were used most of the time and though syrup or molasses were given occasionally for a treat, brown sugar with milk or cream, or often just strained apple sauce, were the usual accompaniments.

Milk was the basic nourishment, of course, and we were always encouraged to drink all we wanted. Aside from strained apple sauce or baked apples and prunes, we had no other fruit for breakfast. Oranges and bananas were practically unknown then.

For our dinner, eaten at noonday, baked potatoes were staple fare, eaten with some kind of cream or fatless meat gravy. Soft-boiled eggs were freely eaten instead of meat and I suppose in the summer we must have been given peas, string beans and tomatoes, probably asparagus but my memory recalls very little about vegetables at this period.

Dessert consisted largely of slightly sweetened stewed fruit of some kind, Indian meal pudding or baked or boiled custard. Pies were unknown to us but sugar and molasses cookies and sponge cake were frequent fare.

Supper was a very light meal with the idea of avoiding any digestive disturbance and so preventing sleep, I suppose. Milk a-plenty, milk or cream toast, brewis - an old English dish of hot milk, slightly salted, with sizeable pieces of bread soaked in it - and baked apples or applesauce are as far as my memory takes me here.

Later, when we had reached the South Room, which meant from the ages of six or seven years on, our diet expanded, but it was still carefully thought out, according to the most hygienic principles then known. Milk continued being item number one. We were given all we could drink and I remember some of the older boys would drink three or four glasses at a meal. It undoubtedly accounted for the more than average height the children attained.

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 we got older, with noonday dinner came the introduction of meat in some form, or a meat substitute. The Community family were never heavy meat eaters. Pork in any form ham, bacon or sausage was taboo, as being indigestible. Lamb was probably used, though I never saw or ever heard of chops till years later. They must have been considered an extravagant cut. But I am sure beef pot roast must have been the favorite, both from point of taste and economy. Meat gravy, very carefully made with fat skimmed off and generously filled with bite-sized pieces of meat, or minced beef on toast constituted our first real acquaintance with meat. Fresh fish, enough for the family, was hard to get, I expect, as I never remember tasting it except when some lucky boy caught a sucker or a bullhead in the creek. But dried codfish in a rich cream gravy and dried beef gravy were very acceptable substitutes for meat.

Baked beans were a favorite dish baked as only those old Community cooks knew how to bake them. The beans were boiled first until they were very tender, salted during the last stage of cooking, the water then strained out and the beans, which were by then of a lovely pinkish color, were turned into a big baking dish for the final touch. At this period, too, fresh vegetables became more important. In the spring radishes and lettuce from the home garden, then peas, string beans, beet greens and so on through the season. We were now almost on a grownup's schedule except that cooked cabbage was not allowed, as being indigestible. Potatoes in various forms were ever present.

Desserts had a somewhat wider range, but ice cream was never heard of. Pies were not considered suitable for children, of course, but puddings of many kinds made the meals more tempting. Molasses and sugar cookies were on hand at least once a day.

Candy was seldom seen. Candied sweet flag and bits of hard licorice were doled out occasionally, if a vestige of cold could be given as an excuse. But the lack of sweets and the unalterable rule of never eating between meals were accountable in a large measure, I fancy, for the good health and good appetites of the children.
 

The question has often been asked, whether the children were dressed in uniforms. No, not in uniforms, but the girls were dressed in uniformly

simple dresses which could be easily made and which were usually covered by low-necked sleeveless calico aprons; the boys wore the customary "pants-and-jackets," buttoned together. The materials of all these garments could vary and also the trimming, if any.

Mr. Van Velzer's shop supplied our shoes but the providing of the stockings would have been a job that would have required the spare time of all the women knitters, had not a machine knitter been bought on which most of the children's stockings were knit.

Possibly the machine could have turned out a shaped stocking if time allowed but that was not considered important. The stockings I remember were simply a long tube, closed at one end and the wearer shaped it to fit his needs. It could be worn one week by a child wearing size 8, next week by a child wearing a 12. They were called railroad stockings and with such a name we could happily accept a rather shapeless ankle.

The Dressing Room was always worth a visit by us girls if we had time on our hands, since there were often bright bits of calico to be salvaged for our patchwork and, in the later days, the Community employed as seamstresses two pretty "outside women," who, to the great admiration of the little girls, wore long dresses and had long hair.

Though the room was given over mostly to the children's rather humdrum clothes, standing along one wall was a wardrobe holding the dresses, coats and hats supplied to our women when, for some reason, they were called on to travel by train to Wallingford or to the smaller Community centers in Brooklyn, Newark or New York. A few "best" outfits were also kept on hand for children, when some mother's, or grandmother's, heart-hunger needed to be satisfied by a visit from them.

This providing of wordly clothing for travel, I have heard, was occasioned by a very embarrassing incident which occurred in the New York Grand Central Station in the days before my time. On this occasion, a few of our women, clad in the Community short dresses, perhaps in an attempt to bring a message of deliverance to the fashion-bound women of the outer world, were held up to ridicule by an insensate public and had to be rescued by the police. After that, common sense was deemed the "better part of valor" and worldly garments were provided for traveling females.

It was in this wardrobe on an upper shelf that the hats were kept and an occasional glimpse, through an accidentally opened door, showed, at the children's end of the shelf, three hats sitting in a row. Two were of white leghorn, trimmed with ribbon streamers and artificial flowers. To me they seemed conscious that they were the Best Hats, and had an air of superiority toward the Second Best Hat sitting beside them. But, for some unknown reason, I fell in love with that little Second Best Hat. It was made

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of black and yellow straw with a drooping brim and, around the crown, a band of blue ribbon, through the bow of which were tucked three stalks of artificial yellow wheat. Really, a very homely hat, maturer taste tells me, but for me it had a beauty far surpassing the Best Hats and I wondered often if I should ever get a chance to wear it.

The chance came at last. One morning we were told that an excursion was coming on the train from Norwich, sixty miles up the valley on the 0. & W. Knowing that on such occasions the children were given special care, faces and hands were given an extra scrubbing, shoes were shined and our clothes were clean and fresh. Then we were told we could stay on the South Porch or on the strip of lawn just beyond, which had been set off by a light, portable fence.

The house-mothers had told the girls to put on their hats, just plain, broad-brimmed, every-day hats. Suddenly it occurred to me that Mrs. Van might let me wear the Second Best Hat. What better chance to show off its beauty? I dashed upstairs at such a pace that I was quite breathless when I reached the Dressing Room but I managed to ask Mrs. Van if she would please let me wear it so the outsiders could see it. She looked at me for a moment in silence, probably wondering at my passion. Then O bliss and rapture! she took it down from the shelf and helped me put it on. "Take good care of it," she may have said, but I was too excited to hear it. My great moment had come. I was off downstairs in a trice and out to the fence, to see the crowds of worlds'-folks that began to pass by on the way from the station.

The other girls were all agog at my appearance, wondering why I had been granted such a privilege, but I couldn't spend time talking to them. I was there to show that hat to the multitude. In a moment I was walking up and down on my side of the fence, listening intently to the peoples' conversation, hoping that they were admiring my precious hat, sure I should hear some woman call the attention of her friends and say, "Look, do you see that little girl in her beautiful Second Best Hat!"

But those words never were uttered. No one noticed my wonderful hat. I couldn't believe it! Didn't these worlds'-women know beauty when they saw it? Apparently not. And so there was nothing to do but to take that darling, discredited little hat back to its humble place on the wardrobe shelf. I never remember seeing it again. I didn't want to. It was a sad, sad memory.

When my little daughter Barbara asked for stories of my childhood this was one of the stories she particularly liked and was always called The Story of the Second Best Hat.

The story goes that in the early days of the O.C., Cornelia Worden and Charlotte Leonard, at the tender age of 3/127 years, could entertain themselves most happily seated at a table with a Bible and Concordance. I never heard of any such precocity in our class of children, but we did have a wonderful opportunity to learn unusual things at Aunt Susan's School.

Whose idea ever launched such a school in the Community, I cannot guess. Certainly it cannot have originated with Aunt Susan. At least, she did not seem a person with enough imagination to have thought out a kindergarten system of which Montessori herself might have been proud.

I really don't remember very much about Aunt Susan, personally. She had a plain face, a plumpish figure, wore her gray hair smoothed close to her head under a black net and spoke in rather a severe tone of voice. In fact, she had none of the lovable qualities one would select for a teacher of young children, but we certainly enjoyed going to her school, so perhaps the attraction wasn't wholly due to the fascinating equipment we had there.

The school was held in Aunt Susan's own bed-sitting room and shared the space with her bed and bureau, but still there was room enough for the children's low work table and small chairs and, since there were three good sized windows, there was plenty of light and air.

All the available wall space was devoted to maps and charts, and it was from these charts, made of heavy cardboard 2½'2 feet wide by 3 feet long, I should say, that we learned our letters and words of one and two syllables, Aunt Susan standing by, long pointer in hand, to focus our attention.

We had then, more than eighty years ago, many of the manual occupations they have today; paper folding, crayoning on outlined pictures, working designs on perforated cardboard with colored yarns and drawing on transparent slates. We learned to count on the brightly colored beads of an abacus and later, to add and subtract on it.

The colors we learned from brilliant two-inch squares of paper pasted in neat rows across one of the wall charts. First the primary colors, red, yellow, blue; then we learned how they were combined to produce the secondary colors and the lovely shades, using water color paints for the purpose. An added pleasure was learning the beautiful names of the colors, which made a deep impression on us. Azure, Ultra-marine, Royal Purple, Scarlet, Crimson, Maroon, Vermillion; it was a joy to pronounce them.

Then, unconsciously we were prepared for future lessons in geometry.

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On another chart were pictures of a straight line, a square, a cube, a triangle, an oblong, a cylinder and, more aspiring yet, a rhomboid and trapezoid, queer unsymetrical shapes, but with unforgettable names. One very unusual toy Aunt Susan's school provided was the wonderful cone we were often allowed to play with. It was about eight inches high, made of hard wood, beautifully finished, and was sliced crossways from top to bottom in varying degrees of thickness. To the base was securely fixed an upright nickel rod about half the size of a pencil, and on this were threaded the graduated sections, through the centers of which holes had been drilled. The fun was to take it apart, mix up the pieces, then put them together again in the right order.

Geography was positively exciting. We learned it from a large wall map; the continents and islands, oceans and seas, the intriguing outlines of the coasts with their capes, bays and peninsulas, and, to teach us the shapes of the states, we had a large jig saw puzzle of the United States and one of New York State, from which we learned the names and shapes of the counties.

The next step was to learn the state capitals and on what river or body of water they were situated. "Concord-on-the-Merrimac," "Augusta-onthe-Kennebec," "Montpelier-on-the-Onion." This last was high humor, and the question had hardly left the teacher's lips when every hand shot up and the answer was given in unison. Only one state, as I remember, did not comply with the regular rule and give us a river or bay to complete the rhythm. "Tallahassee, Inland." It was a disappointment, and we set down the people of Florida as a backward lot.

How long I stayed in Aunt Susan's School, I don't remember, but the day came when I found myself a pupil of Aunt Sarah Johnson, in her school for older children in the Seminary Building. She was quite different from Aunt Susan, being very amiable and frankly fond of children.

At Aunt Susan's school, as in the nursery schools today, our "school work" had really been play. When we entered Aunt Sarah's school, we were, for the first time, engaged in the serious business of education. Aunt Sarah, however, managed to make even the regulation elementary studies as interesting as play. She gave much attention to reading and spelling and the multiplication tables but she allowed us to say them aloud, in a fine catchy sing-song which printed them indelibly on our memories and at the same time was fun to do.

The school room, which Aunt Sarah shared with Mr. Warne, our other teacher, was in the north wing of the Seminary. It was a large light room and had all the proper equipment of desks and blackboards. It also had, quite an innovation for those days, high typesetting desks on either side of

the chimney. Typesetting was a course one took from Mr. Warne, in addition to the other elementary studies, and was a favorite with the boys.

Drawing also, was one of Mr. Warne's subjects; though I had no feeling for it and no aptitude, he set me to drawing a Greek Border, using a ruler for the first time. In spite of the ruler, however, I couldn't make those dreadful intricate lines stay parallel and all the help I ever had from Mr. Warne was an impatient and disgusted, "Rub it out and do it over again." My last memory of that awful drawing was a sheet of smears and tears and then my mind mercifully draws the curtain.

My last Community school experience was after the "Break-up," I think. Mr. Chester Underwood was the teacher, and a good one, showing no favoritism. The school was held in the main part of the Seminary. Our hours were from 9 til 12, with 10 minutes for recess.

The afternoon must have been devoted to classes of young people in their teens and possibly even some adults, since I remember an occasional glimpse, through a seldom opened door, into the room beyond ours where there were tables covered with some amazing apparatus. We were told this was a laboratory, but who taught the classes, I never knew. Not Mr. Underwood, I am sure. He was a man of passionate enthusiasms, phrenology, elocution, Spencerian penmanship and diet, but he never mentioned chemistry. His most absorbing interest was phrenology and though he never talked to us about it, I am certain every child had had his head examined by Mr. Underwood's skillful fingers and his probable future was undoubtedly filed away in Mr. Underwood's remarkable memory.

The subject of his next enthusiasm was elocution, and in this we received his most attentive training. Reading aloud was raised to a fine art. Tone, inflection, pronunciation, enunciation we worked on daily and, to make our enunciation distinct, we repeated very frequently, "Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers" and the lingo following, and, "Around the Rough and Rugged Rocks the Ragged Rascal Ran." The last spoken very clearly, the r's firmly rolled and the tone tragic.

To raise us to heights of grandeur we learned,

I have never forgotten it and to this day it touches my emotions profoundly.

Before coming to the Community Mr. Underwood had been an experienced teacher, evidently acquainted with the classics, for he began at once to start the class ahead of me studying Latin. They commenced, of course, with grammar and the simplest translations, but, as a spur and to accustom them to the liquid sounds of the words, he kept written high up on the

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blackboard in his beautiful Spencerian handwriting the first paragraph from Caesar's Gallic Wars, '~Gallia est omnes divisa in partes tres, etc." It was musical and lovely and we all learned to say it in unison.

And now comes a blank. I do not know when I stopped going to a Community School or why. I must have been at least ten years old, since it was some time after the Break-up and my family had moved to Turkey Street. I think it must have been that my father was no longer steward at the Mansion and I had no means of getting back and forth, but as I have been recalling the past I realize as never before how blessed I was in the early days of my education.
 

A discussion of the women's "appropriation," as it was always called, brings to mind their shopping center. Attractive personality as a business asset had not been thought of in those days, or, at least, it was not a quality to be considered in an organization founded on Community principles; so, for some reason, the Women's Shop was put in the hands of Mrs. Clark and was located in her little eight-by-ten bed-sitting room, just off the Upper Sitting Room.

Fortunately, the stock was so small that four or five shelves on two walls sufficed to hold all that was deemed necessary for the materials and notions that the vanity-chastened women of the Community would want. On the lower shelves were the humdrum goods sheeting, unbleached muslin, Fruit-of-the-loom percale, cambric, silesia and sateen for linings. Strong, bright-green cardboard boxes held an assortment of dull-colored ribbons, white ruchings for the necks of dresses, needles, pins, thread and buttons. The upper shelves, away from the dust, were devoted to the "nice" dress materials: a few bolts of merino and cashmere and perhaps one of black silk for aprons, the only use silk was ever put to, in those days.

I also remember a thinnish, wiry material with the imposing name of mosambique and, most elegant of all, a quite lacy fabric called grenadine, to be used only for dresses worn on state occasions. My grandmother had a dress made of it, to be worn when she waited on "nice company," which was so seldom that the dress lasted for years.

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As I have said, the stock in Mrs. Clark's shop was small and there was not much of a variety in materials to choose from but no one ever complained. Every women made her own clothes and could follow her own taste in the way a dress should be made, but all, of course, must be made in the Bloomer style, or rather, in the Community special modification of this fashion. The famous Community "short dress," to the horror and astonishment of crinolined Victorian visitors, consisted of a bodice and a skirt which hung only two or three inches below the knee, supplemented by wide, straight, untrimmed pantalettes reaching to the ankle.

As a child, I suppose that I accepted this costume as both natural and admirable, but later I realized that it was actually very ugly. It was adopted during the early years of the Community ostensibly for convenience, but I am sure that crucifying the "dress spirit," woman's vanity, was one of the deep-lying motives in the minds of the powers that were. The "dress spirit," in which, seemingly, women had a monopoly, was severely frowned upon and was often the subject of criticism.

The Women's Shop was not the sole feature of interest in Mrs. Clark's room. It had also museum attraction, for Mrs. Clark's hobby, the love of her heart next to the Community, was British and European royalty, and the two walls of the room not devoted to merchandise were the background for pictures, taken from magazines, of kings, queens and emperors and their descendants.

She specialized in the British royal family and there were many pictures of Victoria, the Prince Consort, their children and grandchildren, separate and in groups. There were court scenes in all their splendor arid, since Victoria's family had intermarried so widely with European monarchs, Mrs. Clark's collection included the great from nearly all the courts of Europe. She also had scrapbooks containing all the information she could gather concerning them, so that she was the best authority to be found anywhere around, I am sure.

Mrs. Clark, herself, was a mousy little person, pitifully plain and unattractive, which perhaps was the reason why she aspired so high in her mental affiliations. Here, at least, no one could forbid her right to adore, and it may be that in her imagination she shone in beauty and magnificence with the mightiest. Certainly some mental or spiritual asset seemed to make her content with her humble lot.

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We were not supposed to encroach on the north or east lawns with our play. Children's scampering feet would have ruined the beautiful turf, and besides it was felt that the grown-ups should have some outdoor places for undisturbed enjoyment. However, on the south side of the house we did have the great playground with its big swing, sand beds, race course for racing our velocipedes and its well equipped playhouse really a gymnasium. The playhouse was a great idea, as it could accommodate the activities of children of all ages from five to twelve or fourteen. For the little ones there were two wonderful teeters and three sizes of velocipedes. For the older ones - flying rings and a nicely made horizontal bar on which the older boys could turn flapjacks of several kinds and chin themselves, watching their gain of strength from day to day. And what a boon it was to weary home-mothers on a rainy day! We could also rove at will among the interesting service buildings and the fruit garden on the west, so that we never felt in any way confined. If a small group of three or four girls felt like making a "tent"- all huts and child-made playhouses, even to platforms in trees, were called "tents"- we had a wide range of localities to choose from. Perhaps the little girls would be inspired to furnish one of the dormers in the playhouse like a home. Perhaps it would appeal to us to excavate a space in the pile of slab-wood standing adjacent to the boiler room and there set up housekeeping, using pretty pieces of broken crockery from the rubbish barrel for dishes. Small boys could find enthralling occupation in making intricate marble rollers in the sand bed or engineering a platform tent in a fairly high tree.

There were always more wholesomely interesting things to do than we had time in which to do them.

But more often, when playtime came - the older children did have small daily duties - the big group spirit would prevail, and we would let the majority decide which of many running games should be chosen. Should it be "King, King Castle, Who Dare Rastle," One-old-cat, Prisoners Base, Hide-and-Seek or Escape? The first five are good active games but rather stay-at-home affairs, so that if the crowd was seeking excitement and adventure, Escape, a wide-ranging hide-and-seek, was always the choice.

I never hear the children speak of Escape today as it is still played at Kenwood, but there comes to mind one of the funniest incidents in all my gallery of memories. That day - I must have been about seven years old

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- there was a large group of us children eager to play. A boy was chosen for "It" and the goal selected was a tree standing between the west side of the playhouse and the coal bin. This coal bin was an unusually respectable little house for a coal bin. It was about 6 x 8 feet square, with a steep roof, the lower third of which was hinged so that it could be thrown back when filling it with coal. The only outlets were two small apertures near the ground on the front side.

The game lasted much longer than usual but finally we were all caught, as we supposed until, on counting, we found one of the girls, nicknamed Kegg, was missing. Kegg was a masterful character, a favorite with the boys, proud of being called a tomboy and who liked her nickname, Kegg, which had been coined from the most noticeable letters of her surname, Kellogg. Where was the girl? All the best hideaways were searched, but she wasn't to be found, so the boys called out, "all that are out are free;" the usual procedure when everyone had given up the search.

Suddenly, almost at our feet, we heard a rattling of coal in the bin, then there appeared, on the little ramp from the coal hole to the ground, a scrubby pair of shoes and a pair of sturdy legs in striped stockings. Next, voluminous white drawers, snugly buttoned at the knee, at which the boys yelled, "Sheets! Sheets!" - a nickname she bore for some time after. More wriggling showed inverted white petticoats and after a final mighty effort there she was, the whole of her, sitting on the ground, her hair tousled, her face and clothes covered with coal dust but with a seraphic grin on her face. Her first words were, "You didn't find me, did you?" This we had to acknowledge. Some one asked, "Why did you come out that way?" She simply said, "Had to, couldn't climb out the way I got in."

By today's standards we lived in a very prudish era. Women's underwear wasn't mentioned in polite society. The word drawers was almost indecent, and for a woman to show her underwear inadvertently, or -worst of all - any bare skin save hands, face and throat, was most immodest, yet Kegg, survived her ordeal with great nonchalance. She must have known that she made quite a spectacle, but it never bothered her for a moment nor was her prestige lowered one iota. In fact, I think that, by her daring, she held a higher place than ever in the boys' esteem.

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to wander to other parts of the house and a visit to the various public rooms was quite a day's adventure.

These except for the dining room and kitchen, located in an adjacent building called the Tontine, were naturally situated in the front of the house. As you entered the front door, which was shaded by a high white pillared portico, you found yourself in a wide, wainscotted hallway leading to the foot of a broad, well-lighted staircase. This, after a gentle ascent to a midway-landing, divided into two short flights to the left and right, bringing you to the vestibule and the show case, a mecca of delight to housebound children on a rainy day. But there were several points of interest on the lower floor that must not be missed. At the right as you entered the front hall was the Reception Room. It was a large room furnished with good Victorian furniture brought by well-to-do members. There were three large sofas and two imposing rocking chairs all upholstered in that funereal, but greatly admired black horse-hair. A large, square center table held the customary place of honor and on a small table near the door lay a large leather-bound register, which all visitors were asked to sign.

On another table in front of the north window stood two large, black walnut stereopticons about two and one half feet high and a foot and a half square, with the lenses placed near the top, the light being admitted by lifting up the silver-lined lids. The pictures were carried on a revolving frame turned by a knob on the outside. Great was our joy if there was no company present and we could sit for an hour bringing before our eyes scenes from far off places, well-censored comics and, best of all, a series dealing with the adventures of some unfortunate people in an Hadean world surrounded by imps with forked tails and devils on velocipedes, all in some luminous color. It gave us the shivers but we enjoyed it hugely.

The floor of the Reception Room was covered with an ingrain carpet in black and gray, quite in keeping with the doleful horse-hair upholstery, but there were lace curtains at the windows, the only ones I had ever seen, and between the two front windows hung a large, quite worldy-looking mirror in a gilt frame.

On two of the walls hung large steel engravings, one of President Lincoln surrounded by his cabinet and one of the Pilgrims holding Sunday Service in the cabin of the Mayflower. They held some interest for the inquiring mind but not much for children. However, a fine, large copy of Church's painting of Niagara Falls, viewed from Table Rock on the Canadian side, gave us a tremendous thrill as that great mass of emerald green water plunges over the brink into the steaming vortex below.

Giving some light and interest to the rather dusky rear wall, was a large oil chromo, then highly esteemed, of Goethe's Margaret in Faust, sitting at

her dressing table before the mirror, her admiring nurse standing near while she tried on the gorgeous jewels given her by Mephistopheles, who is seen in an adjacent doorway clothed in scarlet hose and doublet, with such a wicked leer in his eyes and such an evil smile on his lips that one wanted to scream for help.

The room would have seemed rather cold and formal but for the presence there of Aunt Julia; dear, smiling, friendly Aunt Julia - my own blessed grandmother, but Aunt Julia to every Community child - all of whom she loved, tended, played with and read stories to as long as she lived. Her official duties were the reception and entertainment of outside guests, and the Reception Room was her place of business. But when there were no guests to require her attention she would let us children come in to enjoy the various attractions of the room.

Leaving the Reception Room, as you reached the foot of the stairs at the right, you found the august back-parlor, a room large enough to do duty as a guest bedroom also, but rather gloomy, with its dull walls and heavy marble-topped furniture. Therefore, you hastened across to the cheerful room opposite, the library. This was a pleasant room. The walls were lined with alcoves or glass-doored cupboards filled with well-chosen books. Windows to the west and south gave it light, while cane-seated arm chairs lured one to a comfortable corner or to the long reading table, where were found the most important newspapers and journals. Magazines - the Atlantic, Harpers, the Forum and the North American Review, were given a place on a table just below the great clock, dearly loved object of all children, with its big, round dial telling the hours, and the smaller one in the center, measuring off the minutes to the ceaseless tick-tock of the giant pendulum as it swung back and forth in its glass house below.

At the top of the main staircase, surrounding three sides of the stairwell on the upper landing, was the showcase; delight of all the children, a case containing curios brought by members or visitors. Here were to be seen wonderful things from far away lands; Europe, China, Japan. There were beautiful shells from the South Seas, rare coins, medals and autographs, a mastodon's tooth and a trilobite, an Indian Club and a Japanese sword and many things of sheer beauty. It was our museum and we children were fascinated by it.

From the vestibule, two widely-spaced doors led into the Big Hall where the Big Meeting was held nightly and where, on a well-equipped stage with a proper proscenium curtain, the plays, concerts, tableaux and children's choruses were given. This was and is a noble room, at least two storeys high and 40 feet by 55 feet long lighted by three tall windows at the east and eight smaller ones at the west, south and north, lighting the gallery. The

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stage and high arched proscenium occupies the whole eastern end while a nicely panelled balcony runs around the other three sides to which were affixed, in the days before electric lighting, ornamental, metal brackets holding twenty or thirty glass lamps shaded by ground glass globes.

Mr. Erastus Hamilton, the architect, must have tried to make the room his masterpiece, for riot only are the proportions fine arid the acoustics good, but all the architectural details are excellent and by some great good fortune he was able to get an old German mural painter from Syracuse to fresco the side walls in very pleasing panels and the ceiling in arabesques which framed five beautiful pictures of the Muses. The room's greatest seating capacity was about 600.

There was another room on beyond the Big Hall well worth a visit if your permission had been generous. This was the Upper Sitting Room and here you saw a demonstration of the Community principle of being general in personal affections and interest. The room was a place for general sociability. It was a large room two storeys high, lighted by two tall windows looking out upon the eastern lawn. The south wall rose unbroken to the ceiling and would have seemed bare and unlovely had not a large painting, well darkened by age, depicting the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, partially filled the space.

On the north and west sides of the sitting room and on the same level were small, private bedrooms; none of them more than eight by twelve feet in size. Above them, on the third storey, a similar arrangement of rooms was reached by a narrow balcony. This upper floor was known as the Corridor and held a special fascination for us children. A balcony from which one can watch the activities below is always attractive but in this case it was peculiarly so because of a collection of framed steel engravings hung against the white panels of the balustrade. These engravings had been given to the Community by an excommunicated Italian priest who visited it in the early days. There were heads of the Muses, Homer, Virgil, Plato, Sappho and Apollo and many others of ancient renown. Never did I tire looking at them. They were familiar friends of my childhood and it was a great surprise, that many years later, I recognized them in a photograph of one of Raphael's famous cartoons.

Below on the ground floor was another room the same size, the Lower Sitting Room, but only one storey high which halved its charm. It was, however, a most comfortable gathering place for the older people, who were given the adjacent rooms whenever possible.

This room possessed one feature no other could boast, it adjoined the entrance to the North Tower. When we were young we were told by some awed stay-at-home that the North Tower was the tallest building in the

world. Well, it was in our world. So, to be taken by some grown person up its long, winding stairs to the very top, then lifted until we could look over the balustrade down upon our friends below, or way off to the wooded hills on the horizons, was to know a thrill almost beyond words.
 

The meals in the early days of the Community were very simple, meager in fact, according to the stories told us, but in our day they were excellent. They were simple still, no elaborate dishes, but we had a wide range of fine vegetables nicely cooked, splendid homemade breads of wheat and graham flour, and a really attractive hardtack made of fine, ground oatmeal and wheat, for those who wished to give their teeth exercise. We children were encouraged to eat some hardtack daily. Meat was not eaten every day from principle, but there were always substitutes in the way of eggs, fish, cheese or creamy meat gravies, and there was milk for everyone, all one could drink. Though living in the Pie Belt, pie was looked upon, for us children at least, as rather a menace; so, for dessert, we looked to the "milk pudding" category rice, tapioca, sago and custards, with cookies instead of cake.

The South Dining Room was the one chosen for the children, as it was sunnier and the view from the windows more interesting. We were allotted three or four tables looking out east onto the Quadrangle. Our meals were served regularly at 7:30, 12:00 and 6:00, and our diet and table manners were watched over carefully by the mothers and fathers of the Children's House who presided at the tables.

At what age we were encouraged to carry our used dishes to the dishwashing room I do not remember, but I suppose we had to be tall enough to lift them to the high table surrounding the big, shining copper vats in which they were washed. It was a proud day when we could do this, as the grown folks did, and a prouder one still when we were invited by some friend or our parents to sit at one of the two round tables and take our turn

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at spinning the revolving center for some desired dish. Choosing from the array offered was like making a round of exciting visits. I would help myself first to the food, then, a bit surreptitiously, give the center part a spin and call on the sugar bowl, the pepper and salt, or the vinegar cruet or the pepper-sauce bottle.

Today the South Dining Room, including what was the dish-washing room, is the only one in use, the North Dining Room being used for service rooms.
 

The Nursery Kitchen, however, was a room toward which everyone gravitated. Standing against the west wall was a sturdy little cook-stove in which a fire was always burning, and on it a kettle of boiling water was ready to meet any possible emergency.

The room was designed originally as an adjunct to the nearby nursery where the young babies spent the day, but as time went on it became a general service room, and to its early equipment of stove, sink and drying rack were added an immaculately kept ironing table, an upholstered sofa and two well-padded Boston rockers. In the wintertime in this warm and cozy room, the children could come in from sliding on the nearby South Hill to dry their mittens and warm their feet and hands at the stove. As the day waned, the grownups would drop in to enjoy the glowing fire and brew themselves a cup of tea from the varied supply always kept in the adjacent closet. There was black tea, green tea, dried strawberry leaf tea and blackberry leaf tea, as well as sage and catnip if a cold was in the offing and something slightly medicinal was wanted; and, if one were in a heroic mood, there was red pepper for a tea of really high potency. This, followed by a Turkish bath, was almost sure to forestall the threatened cold.

On another shelf in the closet were to be found cups, saucers and spoons, a small wooden pail of sugar and a pail of crackers. All one needed then was good company, and one didn't have to wait long before some kindred spirit passing by would be glad to stop for a chat and a cheering cup.

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Why it was called the Court I never knew. The Crossroads would have described it better. It connected the Mansard wing of the house with the earlier, quite imposing, gabled main building and was the meeting place of the hallways running north and south, as well as having an outside door to the Quadrangle on the west, and one through a short hall, to the east. The room was about thirty by fifteen feet in size, and being well lighted by tall windows and glass-panelled double doors on the west, was put to many practical uses.

On entering from the south, one passed the doorway leading by the stone stairs to the cellar, the most used route to the Lamp Room and the Turkish Bath. This stairway was enclosed by a partial partition, the lower part panelled, the upper part louvered to admit light arid air. Adjoining it was the family umbrella cupboard containing twenty or more black cotton umbrellas for general use. No permission was required to take one but one was on one's honor to return it.

The next point of great interest to the children was the ice-water fountain. It was at least three feet high, large enough to hold good-sized cubes of ice, was supported on a strong shelf and its faucet was within the reach of a child. But it was more than just a drinking fountain. It was a thing of beauty to me. Besides being a brilliant jade green in color, painted on the front was a picture of Fanny Davenport, an actress, we were told, a woman of the world to be sure, but to my eyes beautiful beyond compare with her gorgeous low-necked gown and white plumed hat. Quenching my thirst became an act of devotion.

Just beyond the fountain was the big double window giving a glimpse into the library. In those days the children were not allowed to go to the library alone, as there was no librarian. Grown-ups could draw books when they wished but, as with the umbrellas, they were on their honor to return them within a reasonable time and in good condition.

However, the Court's most important function was as headquarters for the Home Fire Department. On four shelves placed against the north wall were, neatly stacked, probably thirty ten-quart papier-mache pails, painted dark green with "Fire" in dull gold lettering across the front. And that was all. Apparently these pails seemed adequate apparatus to the Community people, for their real reliance, I am sure, was their trust in God, the fact

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that no one smoked tobacco, and that their lamps, though burning kerosene, were kept immaculately clean; no charred wicks or smoky chimneys, and only safety matches used. As a final precaution there was always a night watchman, as regular and dependable as the sun.

These simple arrangements lasted as long as did the old regime but after the Break-up a more worldly caution came to the fore. The fire pails were done away and in their corner stood two cylindrical copper fire extinguishers while on the wall, in a glass case, appeared a savage-looking fire axe with a bright red handle. The new system was more efficient probably but looked feeble to us, in comparison with the old array of green pails. Later came a hose cart on wheels which stood outside the door and there were several other fire extinguishers placed at strategic intervals through the house, but very rarely in all its history has there been even a small blaze anywhere. Now, alas, we have a sprinkler system.

Certainly the most remarkable feature of the Court was the Century Plant. It stood in a huge green wooden tub in the corner by the west window and had grown to an amazing size considering its confinement. We children were told it blossomed only once in a hundred years, so we had little hope of being alive for that dim, far-off event but we were deeply interested in watching those strange leaves unfold.

Why was I such an incurious child? Why didn't I ask more questions about the world around me? And how deeply I regret it today, for I never asked where that wonderful plant came from; who had the enterprise to transport that great sub-tropical creature to Oneida so far from its natural habitat. And then another mystery what finally became of the Century Plant? I only know that at some time during my absence it vanished and I never learned its fate.

There were two other important points of interest in the Court. The big combination thermometer and barometer, visited regularly by certain statistically-minded people and the Bulletin Board, both hanging on the south wall.

The Bulletin Board was an important family institution. One of its most important uses was, perhaps, as a Lost and Found Department, for no sooner had the Bulletin Board been told of a missing article than the interest of the whole family was engaged and the lost object was quickly restored to the hands of the owner. The Bulletin Board was a perfect place for announcements, too. For instance: A carload of pineapples has just arrived at the Fruit House. Help wanted." And the need was quickly met. Others: 'My night-blooming cereus will be in full flower tonight. Come if you care to see it. Mary P." "I will be glad to take small parties for a boat ride on the creek above the dam almost any afternoon, weather permitting. Wm. Inslee."

Mr. Inslee was custodian of the only boat the Community owned and the scenery above the dam was worth seeing.

The enquiries might cover an urgent need, such as, "Will the person who borrowed my freestone from the back of the Nursery-Kitchen stove, please return it. Julia A." (The freestone was the forerunner of the hot water bag.) "Has anyone an extra pillow they can spare. I need one badly. John L."

The Court was no place for a sit-down chat since there was no place to sit save on a small cast iron settee, but it was a friendly place for social greetings, and I cannot imagine Community life without it.
 

The cellar seemed a vast place, running as it did under the whole building and connecting, by an underground passage-way, with the Tontine cellar and basement kitchen. Most of the rooms were high and fairly light which made it an ideal place for playing Hide-and-Seek or Escape. But the cellar had many points of peculiar interest besides. There was the boiler-room with its incessantly chugging hydraulic pump and the two huge boilers into which Mr. Boilerman Smith, as we called him, was continually feeding coal or slab wood. When he opened the furnace doors and we saw the awful glowing fires, the heroism of Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego became very real and our faith in miracles became firm and comforting.

Going east from the boiler-room one passed the steam-fitters room filled with all sorts of steel piping and "coils," as the radiators were always called. Then came some darkish storage bays leading to the well-lighted Chain Room where the children did their daily "stint" of either untangling the bad snarls in which the malleable links were often sent to us when they were brought from the factory, or of making these links into chains which later were attached to the animal traps made by the Community.

Adjoining the Chain Room was the Lamp Room, where were brought daily all the lamps in the house that needed filling or cleaning. They were placed on a large round table with a whirling top, and it was here that Mr. Randolph attended to all their needs; filling them with kerosene from a big metal tank with a faucet right at hand, trimming the wicks and washing the

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chimneys at a nearby sink. By noon his work was done and, filled and shining, the lamps were ready to be called for by the owners or janitors, since there were many lamps required for the hallways and public rooms.

The lamp room held an undue interest for us children on account of the strangeness of Mr. Randolph, who, prior to joining the Oneida Community, had been for many years a member of a Shaker community and still maintained their habit of silence. He did speak, of course, when necessary, though I never remember having heard him do so. He also continued the Shaker oddity of dress, wearing a gray shoulder shawl and wide-brimmed felt hat much of the time in the house. His hair he wore like Elder Evans, to shoulder length.

Beyond the Lamp Room a little way, was the Turkish Bath, a group of four small rooms shut off by a forbidding-looking door on which hung a placard in large print giving the days and hours scheduled for baths for men, women and children. Owing to the men's daytime occupation, most of the evening hours were allotted to them.

Today, when one thinks of Turkish baths one thinks of rather luxurious conditions but our Turkish bath was quite primitive. One entered through a dimly-lit dressing room furnished with three backless benches. Rows of hooks on the wall held one's clothes. Next came the cooling-off room.

If the bather was not feeling particularly Spartan and merely wanted to get clean, he passed through the cooling-off room and went at once to the wash room, where he stood on a cold concrete floor and washed in a tin basin, set on the high shampooing table, dipping up the water from a pail on the floor. There was plenty of soap, good stiff bath brushes, and one finished off with a douche from the spray.

If, however, one had the time and felt the need for absolute cleanliness he went at once to the hot room and took a sweat. Someone had dubbed the place "Tophet" and so it seemed to us children, when the fire was allowed to rage and the huge stove in the alcove got so red that it seemed dangerous. Since this great stove was stoked from a door in the back, the boilerman, who tended it, never seemed aware of the almost unbearable heat he could at times produce.

Save for one reclining chair in front of the fire, a doubtful luxury, the hot room provided nothing but sheet-covered wooden couches to sit or lie upon and, to accommodate the children who were brought in, four or five at a time, girls during the women's hours) boys during the men's, there was a tier of bunks on the west wall. How long one stayed in the hot room depended upon how long it took to perspire; or the amiability of the person in charge, if the bather happened to be a child. We always stood it uncomplainingly but it was certainly a great relief to dash out at last from the

heat of Tophet to the cooler air of the washroom and a splash of cool water on our bodies. Then came a good scrub with soap and water and a cold douche from the spray and we were ready for a good toweling in the cooling-off room. Grown-ups could wrap in a fresh sheet and lie on one of the inviting daybeds here until they were sure their pores were closed, but the children, patience worn thin by this time, would scramble into their clothes as quickly as possible, then off for well-earned play.

In the Turkish Bath most of the Community folks did their bathing, although there were several ordinary bathrooms furnished with tin-lined tubs for those who did not like anything as rigorous as a Turkish bath.

In those days Turkish baths were highly esteemed as therapeutic treatment for most ills of the flesh colds, malaria, etc., etc., and it was considered a preventive as well as a curative measure. On those occasions, when a Turkish bath was deemed advisable as a remedy for a cold or "fever 'n ague," for example, some strong person who had had instruction in massage was assigned to give treatment, and the records for recovery were high.

I never knew who introduced the idea of the Turkish bath to the Community. It must have been someone with a powerful belief in them, for the idea was taken up with a lasting enthusiasm, and the necessary equipment was installed for the Community family in Wallingford. During the later days at Oneida, a fairly luxurious bath was even established in the front rooms of the Arcade, as the Fruit House was sometimes called, and neighbors or visitors could indulge for a price. I don't know how much was charged, but evidently too much to make them popular, and the enterprise did not last long.

It must have been in the heyday of the early enthusiasm for the baths that one of our Community artists drew a clever series of sketches which were published in the Circular, showing the experience of a man who came to see what a bath would do for his very decrepit condition. He was named by the artist Mr. Bilious Briggs, and the sketch showed him badly bent over and leaning heavily on a cane. His cheeks were hollow and he seemed a man who had lost hope.

Having heard of the wonders of a Turkish bath, however, he was willing to try one. He was taken in charge by a young attendant, undressed and taken to the hot room, where he is shown taking a sweat, the perspiration pouring off him onto the floor in large drops. At this point he is told he is getting rid of poisons. Soon he is sitting upright, beginning to come alive, and by the time he has had a vigorous shampoo and a good rubbing in the washroom, he is a new man. He pays his bill, expresses his deep gratitude and has recovered such vigor that on the walk home he tosses his hat in the air and leaps over a five-barred gate.

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Only a short distance beyond the Turkish Bath a fruity odor assailed you, and if you followed your nose you came to a faded blue door with a screened ventilator at the top and found yourself at Uncle Joseph's fruit cellar.

If you rapped, Uncle Joseph, as he was usually called, would come to the door, peering down at you through thick-lensed glasses, and ask what you wanted. Then, especially if you happened to be a little granddaughter named Corinna and asked very politely if you might look around, there would be a humorous smile on his lips and he would say, I wonder if you would like to see what is in this big chest." He would lift the lid and there were boxes of layer raisins, with labels showing gaily dressed men and women dancing, and in letters of red and gold the words, "Malaga, Spain." Where was Malaga, Spain? Then and there was implanted in me, I believe, an enduring curiosity about foreign lands.

Besides the raisins, there was a box of dried Zante currants and a box of citron. All these things, Grandpa said, were to be used in the delicious fruit cake usually served to company, although on rare occasions raisins were served with nuts to the home family. Also for the family were the lovely golden dates, just showing where the matting cover of their boxes had been partly stripped off. With what longing I must have gazed at them, for always two or three were slipped into my hand with a few raisins for good measure.

Grandpa must have known that children were always hungry, for he would then lift the wire screening cover off the big round cheese which held a preferred position on the long deal table. For a child who said she liked cheese, he would cut "lust a sliver" with the big, dangerous-looking cheese knife. He was very fond of cheese, himself, and sympathized with my appetite.

At one end of the room apples were kept in their nice clean barrels, and Grandpa would show us Baldwins, Northern Spies, Pound Sweets and Greenings and tell us what they were used for: Pound Sweets for baking, Greenings for pies and Northern Spies for baking or applesauce. Our home' made applesauce was of a special kind which I have never found anywhere else, the apples being pared, cored, quartered and laid carefully in a large milk pan, covered with a liberal amount of water, sweetened to taste and watched carefully while they simmered so that the pieces never got broken or too soft. The Baldwin apples, being unsuited to cooking, were used on the table for dessert at dinner or breakfast. One of Grandpa's responsibilities was to inspect the contents of each barrel every few weeks to see if any apples were spoiled or were getting so ripe they should be used. These, of course, were promptly removed and sent to the Kitchen.

Early in the fall there was a short period when for table use the family

was treated to some of the rare varieties that would not keep through the winter: Beilfiowers, Russets, Pippins, Primates, Snow Apples and the Early Jo's a scrubby little apple but of a delicious flavor which all foraging children knew well and loved. These last three varieties came from trees down by the Dunn Cottage, the cunning little Gothic house just beyond the boundary hedge on the North Lawn, where Dr. Dunn, on account of ill-health and inability to stand noise, was allowed to live by himself.

One of Grandpa's keen interests as keeper of the fruit harvest was in keeping the luscious grapes that were brought to him from the Vineyard, the lovely blue-black Wordens and Concords, the delicate-flavored Delawares and the sturdier, strongly-flavored Rogers. There were also late pears: Russets Sheldons and Flemish Beauties. These, with care, he could keep for Thanksgiving.

Though the smell of apples predominated in the fruit cellar, there was another very pungent odor you detected in the store room, and when you asked about that he would laugh and take you into the adjoining wine cellar where, in several ancient-looking barrels, he was carefully hoarding wine of his own making, Red Currant, Black Currant and Rhubarb. The Community did not believe in strong drink, so the wine was supposed to be purely medicinal, but occasionally there would be a ceremony of some kind for which wine seemed indicated. Then Uncle Joseph's supply could always be counted on.

But Uncle Joseph wasn't solely a keeper of harvested fruit. In his younger days he had turned his hand very efficiently to many activities, but in his middle years, being a natural horticulturist, he helped much with the fruit raising. Gardening was such a passion with him that in his later days, when he was lame and nearly blind, he kept a most immaculate vegetable garden on the eastern end of the playground. Here he grew, also, a few of his favorite flowers, but his chief delight was his herb bed of sage, catnip, fennel, caraway, thyme and bergamot.

I had never known of bergamot, but I well remember asking him one day, when I was visiting him in his garden, what it was, and for the answer he stooped down and picked a sprig of it, telling me to smell it. I did, but it seemed to be without odor. Then he took it from me, pinched it between his fingers and handed it back. I smelled it again and found it had a choice, aromatic fragrance. When I exclaimed over it he said very quietly and with a far-away look in his eyes, "Bergamot is like the human soul. It doesn't give out its beauty till it has been slightly crushed."

There was just one more room of interest at this northern end of the cellar. That was the Distributing Room as it was called, although it also acted as a receiving room, where everyone brought his soiled clothes to be

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sent to the laundry. After the clothes were washed and ironed, they were returned to this room to be sorted and distributed into the neat, white compartments which lined the walls, each labeled with its owner 5 name.

In a jog in the wall just beyond the Distributing Room, a finely made, straight-sided cask stood on end. There was a shining nickel faucet at the bottom and a nicely fitted cover at the top. One couldn't have guessed its use unless he had followed Mr. Underwood from the Nursery Kitchen and there seen him pump a pailful of water from the soft-water pump and carry it down the stone stairs leading from the court. When he arrived at that queer barrel, he would remove the cover and pour the water into a metal receptacle filled with fine charcoal. This, I was told, was Mr. Underwood's soft-water filter. The word arthritis was then unknown but everyone was urged to drink from this filter to avoid "stiffening of the joints." Perhaps no Community joints ever stiffened, for although Mr. Underwood served the filter assiduously, practically no one but Mr. Underwood ever used it. The other members must have been too busy to go to the cellar for a drink of water, and there were few "body tenders."

"Body tending" must have been one of the special Community words, for I have never heard it anywhere else. Wherever it came from, it stood for one of the minor sins and was under strong condemnation. It represented an attitude of egotism, self-indulgence and lack of faith. There were several estimable people who were considered "body tenders" and, at times, were roundly criticized for it, but when that tendency is in the blood, apparently nothing can be done about it. In the case of the Community members who were addicts, it seldom amounted to more than a bath twice a week instead of once, seeking fresh air whenever available, brushing their teeth twice a day and, in Mr. Underwood's case, drinking filtered soft-water and eating hardtack. This last was made especially for him of coarse oatmeal stirred up with water, a bit of salt added and made into biscuits. These Mr. Underwood would eat with gusto and devotion, knowing them to be toughening and cleansing for teeth and gums, if chewed fine, and strong nourishment besides. I never heard the phrase "chew it fine" when I was a child, but Mr. Underwood had gained the knowledge from some source and was a remarkable example of hygienic living, being the weakling in a family of nine children, so he told me, and outliving all his brothers and sisters.

Usually there is nothing very interesting to children about the washing, ironing and sorting of clothes but the efficient way in which this matter was handled in the Oneida Community makes it a subject for comment. Monday morning was the time set for bringing all soiled clothing to the Distributing Room. Here, at one end of the big room, it was sorted and put in large boxes having hinged lids, strong hasps and handles at each end. A

long, low railed ramp was lifted up to the cellar window, which was just large enough to admit the boxes. Then, from outside, Mr. Goff, the man who drove the laundry-wagon, would reach down through the window with a long pole with a large hook on the end. The man in the room below would attach the pole's hook to one of the box handles, and up the box would go, to be loaded onto the wagon and soon would be on its way to the laundry, situated just behind the saw-mill.

Mr. Goff was a man we children liked very much, even if he was an 'outsider." He was a big man, rough-looking and shaggy as a St. Bernard, but just as kind and friendly to children. If he was driver for the day and a child was hanging around, looking wistful, he would most always ask if the child wanted a ride and, on the promise to go straight home afterward, the lucky boy or girl would then be given a ride as far as the station road. We seldom had rides, and a ride behind a pair of horses was a treat.

If Mr. Goff wasn't driving, his alternate would be Melvin. For some reason, this person was never referred to as "Mr. Melvin," unless one had to speak directly to him. Then, one spoke with great respect, even awe, for there was a story afloat that "Dick Burke's father had stabbed Melvin," and Melvin's personality was such that we felt sure he had deserved it. He was a tall, lean, dark-visaged man with never a smile or pleasant word for the children, who, I assure you, seldom troubled him. Although we never knew "Dick Burke's father," some of our boys, on a visit to the foundry, had seen handsome, redheaded Dick, who was foreman there and who radiated such a genial Irish friendliness that it redeemed his whole family and enlisted all our interest on the side of the Burkes.

To finish the picture of the cellar, we must now go west of the boiler room, where we started, and pass through the tunnel which connected the main building with the Tontine, a distance of about thirty feet. The place always seemed a bit spooky, lit by only one lamp at each end and its roof so low that tall people had to stoop. However, it was a most useful thoroughfare to the dining room in bad weather, since a stairway at the west end led up through the dish-washing room to the South Dining Room. Almost opposite the foot of this stairway a door opened into the basement Kitchen. This was a large room, lighted from the west and south by three large windows and by four small, high windows on the east. The walls were of rough field stone, the floor of ordinary deal flooring, well-worn but well-scrubbed. A large coal range stood in the light part of the room. Sinks, large wooden ones, occupied most of the south side, and the potato washer, apple-paring machines and a stone stairway to the Quadrangle shared the eastern wall.

In the northwest corner, a wide doorway led to the two dumb-waiters which carried the hot food in large containers to the serving room above.

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There it was dished up into nappies and platters to be carried to the dining room by the waiters, whose only duties were to keep the serving dishes filled as long as there were people at the tables. The matter of clearing away the dirty dishes was neatly solved by requiring each diner to take his own dishes to the dish-washing room. The habit of carrying one's dishes away after eating became so automatic that, years after the Break-up of the Community, old Dr. Dunn, after finishing his dinner at a smart hotel in Syracuse, picked up his dishes and was well on his way to the kitchen before being relieved of them by a waiter.

The kitchen was a dull room to spend one's days in. The idea of making a kitchen beautiful hadn't been thought of then, but there was one great compensating factor. The cook, a negress, Mrs. Pete Charles, was sunshine itself and gave everyone who entered the room a sense of happiness and well-being. I am sure that even the old men who sat operating the appleparers partook of it for they never seemed to feel bored or neglected.

Mrs. Charles had a husband who did the heavy work in the kitchen. He was part Indian, we were told, and he looked it, being tall and straight with straight black hair and heavy features, a man who seldom spoke unless spoken to and then as briefly as possible. Mrs. Charles was his exact opposite, short and stout with a large motherly bosom, large, full brown eyes, quite regular features, shining black hair which broke into little curls around her face and a happy, smiling mouth, glad to show its perfect teeth. She had no children of her own and seemed to hunger for a chance to be with children, so our visits were always warmly received She was more than glad to have us watch her make the cake and cookies, to help her sample the little try-cakes and scrape the sweet dough from the mixing bowl. She was a joy, another happy acquaintance with an "outsider."

Here, again, I am alluding to an "outsider." Why, I wonder, did they always intrigue me so? I am searching my memory to find out. I assumed without question that we Community folks were taught more about Jesus Christ than the outsiders. Wasn't Father Noyes almost as good as Jesus Christ? Anyway, whenever I happened to pass his opened door he was always sitting in his big arm-chair with his eyes shut and when I asked why, I was told he was communing with St. Paul. What was communing? Listening, perhaps. After that I always tiptoed past his room, but one day, I remember, he saw me and asked if I wouldn't like to come in, that he had something pretty to show me. Then he took me on his knee, opened up a desk drawer and there, on a bed of cotton wool, were all the women's brooches. I had never seen so much jewelry before. They were dazzling, beautiful, but I didn't dare ask why they were there. Later I learned they had been temporarily banned to crucify the women's vanity and were later returned when their owner's had conquered the "Dress Spirit.

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I knew, of course, that the grown'ups held meetings every evening in the Big Hall. We children had meetings, too, every evening in the South Room. Mr. Kelly or Mr. Clarence read to us from the New Testament or Psalms, taught us The Lord's Prayer and every night we said "Fess Christ." The first few years I didn't know what the words meant, except that there was something about it which was redemptive. It was absolution for all the petty misdeeds of the day. We were also taught to be unselfish and honest, to provoke to love, to do good for evil and to be peacemakers. We were especially adjured never to tell a lie; a lie was never glossed over by calling it a white lie and we were told that lying was not only the uttered falsehood to be an "eye-servant" was one form of lying. Further, any kind of deliberate deception was a lie, and must be absolved by deep penitence. The quest for spiritual improvement was never absent.

We even got the idea while quite young that there was something fine and quite superior about the women's short hair and short dresses and yet how unspeakably ugly they were on some of the women the ungraceful ones. The women made their own dresses and, if they had taste, the dresses were quite pretty but as I think of them even now, an angel couldn't have redeemed those awful, shapeless pantalettes. I can remember to this day how they always hurt me. I hated to look at our women below the knee and how lovely, how graceful were the long dresses and the long hair of the women "outside."

We little girls fairly ached to comb long hair and do it up but we hadn't even dolls to fuss over, because it was considered idolatry by our elders, whatever that meant. Something to do with dolls evidently. Occasionally lovely Mrs. Constantine, who lived in the little Baker Cottage on the way to the mill, would let us take down her beautiful black hair, so long she could sit on it, and comb it and braid it and coil it to our heart's content. But alas, the Baker Cottage was out-of-bounds and we always had an uneasy conscience while there and, also, she was an "outsider," though her husband worked in our kitchen.

In spite of all the Community teaching and in spite of our absolute conviction of the superiority of the Community's way of life, it was still puzzling to me, as a child, to find that all the "outsiders" I knew or had ever seen were nice and kind. Even homely freckle-faced Tommy Lynch, who helped Mr. Taylor drive the cows up from the Cragin meadow, always looked as if he would like to stop and make friends, and yet there was some reason - never definitely explained to me, anyway - why it shouldn't be done.

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Our first love was the huge washing-machine, invented and made by our own carpenters and machinists. It was an amazing object. Attached to a revolving rod near the ceiling were what seemed like two long, ungainly but powerful legs shod by big, clumsy overshoes which sloshed back and forth in a large trough full of deliciously foaming suds. How we children envied the washing machine.

After being washed, the white clothes were thoroughly rinsed and blued, then laid loosely in the perforated metal baskets inside the centrifugal wringer. That wringer was necessarily a World's product, since our carpenter shop had no facilities for shaping metal strong enough to stand the strain, which must have been terrific. The clothes whizzed around in it so fast one could hardly believe they were moving, yet in almost no time they were dry. One other piece of machinery used in the laundry was a large mangle, also made "outside," on which Mr. Mason ironed all the flat pieces. Shirts, dresses and smaller articles were hand-ironed by a corps of our own women in the big, well-lighted laundry workroom.

Mr. Mason was the general handy man at the laundry, doing all the heavy lifting, tending the machinery and hanging out most of the clothes on the lines. He was short, squarely built and brawny, wore a heavy, black beard, which covered most of his face, had thick black hair, penetrating black eyes, spoke an intriguing Cockney English and was said to have served in an English regiment in India (which lent him a touch of romance in our eyes). At his work he always wore rubber boots, overalls and a blue denim apron and was distinctly an "outsider" but, for all that, was a man to be highly respected. We didn't fear him, though, for he was very tolerant of children visitors, realizing, I suppose, that our visits "outside" and with "outsiders" were rare and much enjoyed.

By Thursday each week, barring rainy weather, the clothes were all done, neatly folded, packed in the big laundry boxes they came in, and returned to the Distributing Room of the Mansion. By Friday morning, Miss Marion was at her post, standing before the long white table, sorting clothes into piles according to names and carrying them to their special compartments, ranged along the walls. By Saturday they would be called for by their owners.

That tells the story of the laundering of the Community clothing, but

how the clothes were provided was another problem, for there were no "ready-to-wear" clothes in those days, and the Community wouldn't have considered buying them, if there had been. Instead, it found among its own members, tailors, tailoresses, dressmakers and shoemakers. Very efficient ones they were, too, and as usual under the Community system, small departments were set up to accommodate them.

The children's clothes were made by a small corps of women, having a natural aptitude for dressmaking. The room devoted to this work was on the second floor of the Mansion, adjoining the bathroom where the small children were bathed. Able Mrs. Van Velzer was in charge of this department and was also responsible for keeping a suitable wardrobe of women's long dresses, coats and hats of assorted sizes for use when Community women were obliged to travel in the outside world. Since the Oneida Community could afford only a limited number of such costumes, many were the amusing tales told by women who had to fare forth in garments far too large or too small.

I remember that one time my mother was invited to visit my grandfather's sisters, then living near Hamilton, N. Y. Mother had made the customary application to "The Public" as the women's goingaway wardrobe was called, but at the time they had no dress on hand that came near fitting her. So, as she wanted very much to make the visit, she took a dress two or three sizes too large in the bust and decided to conceal the absurdity by constantly wearing a shoulder shawl. At first, the aunts decided she must be very cold-blooded, or used to a warmer house, so they plied the fires with more wood until they were all suffering from heat, but still mother kept her shawl wrapped closely around her. Finally, in desperation, they asked mother why she kept her shawl on all the time. Wasn't she well? I do not remember hearing exactly what my poor mother replied, but I know that she had to finally confess the embarrassing truth and, I suppose, to abandon the concealing shawl. Vanity and the "Dress Spirit" were crucified and I am sure the Community would have approved, had they known about it.

Mr. Aiken, a tall, black haired, quiet man, was the tailor and his "tailor's shop," as it was called, was on the second floor of the Silk Office Building. Here he worked at a high table in the large well-lighted room, cutting out garments with huge tailor's shears and pressing with a heavy, unwieldy tailor's goose. We children would look in occasionally, when on an exploring expedition, but the atmosphere was not one of welcome and we seldom stayed long.

Quite different was our reception at the shoe shop, which occupied a good-sized room in the basement of the same building. This room was low

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but had two windows facing north which gave good light. In the center was a small pot-bellied stove for use in the winter and around the walls hung a frieze of patterns and shoe lasts. There was a very pleasing smell of wax and new leather, too, which added to the attractiveness of the place. There Mr. Van Veizer sat, day after day, on his shiny cobbler's bench, cutting, stitching or sewing by hand the shoes worn by the home folks. For the men on the farm or in the factory or mill, it was a matter of making boots almost knee high, of heavy leather with pegged soles, and what fun we thought it to see Mr. Van Velzer punch the holes with his awl, then drive each neat little wooden peg home with a couple of taps from his hammer.

How Mr. Van Velzer, unaided in the early days, ever managed to shoe such a large family, I can't imagine, but shoe them he did, and the work was very well done. Of course, in those days one seldom had two pairs of shoes, and at times might have to wear shoes conspicuously patched or mended, but everyone was treated alike so it did not matter.
 

THE subject of the Kitchen can't be dismissed without a description of the building which, just across a private service roadway, faced the back of the Kitchen and was a very important adjunct to it. This building was a long, low, one-storey structure, rather shabby and of a weathered gray, which housed the dairy, the store and storage quarters for both store and Kitchen.

The dairy was presided over by Miss Jerusha Thomas, always reckoned by the children as the homeliest woman in the world. We children loved superlatives. My childish impression of her was that she was short, square and flat. Her short hair was white and her complexion florid, her eyes were small and deep-set and her straight, thin-lipped mouth closed like a trap. She seldom spoke to us children when we happened around to watch the dairy proceedings except to say, "Look out! Don't get in the way." But could she make butter? Lovely golden butter, which, after washing and working with her wooden paddle to get out all the whey and get in the salt, she would pack it into large stoneware jars or make into beautiful oblong loaves, scored across the top like a washboard cookie.

And how strong she was, strong as a man. With the aid of some hooks, a rope and a pulley, she could swing those big milk cans from the milk wagons around to the huge receiving tub as easily as a child could lift a toy.

Afterward the big cooler pails would be filled from the spigot and she would lift them, apparently with ease, into the deep vats of ice water. Homely and stern she might be, but her muscular prowess deeply impressed us children.

She was certainly a woman of power in her job. Did she, I have since wondered, have some compensating social life? I never remember seeing her around, except in Big Meeting, but she undoubtedly did have her friendships, more satisfying in the Community, I am sure, where social distinctions didn't exist and early background was of no account, than anywhere else she could have lived.

The dairy was joined to the two store-rooms through whose cobwebby windows could be seen barrels and boxes, new mops and brooms, and then came the store proper, a place of great wonder and delight to us children, for we knew nothing of stores outside. Here we saw barrels of flour and meal and sugar, sacks of salt, strangely decorated chests of tea, cans of spices, boxes of dates and raisins, a cheese in its wire-screened box, sacks of coffee, too, of various kinds Java, Rio, and Mocha - to be mixed to taste and ground in the big, red coffee-mill.

It was a fascinating spot and, as there was a friendly clerk, I often went there for a visit and was often given a small lump of brown sugar from the barrel. And thereby hangs a sad tale.

One day, having nothing much to do, I decided to see what the store could provide. As I entered, Mr. V., the clerk, was busy waiting on a customer so, to my low-voiced request for a lump of sugar, he hastily said, "Help yourself." "Help myself!" What an opportunity! I went over to the brown sugar barrel, thinking to take only a lump of the usual size, like a small walnut. Then an awful greed siezed me, for there, simply asking to be taken, was a lump the size of a small cabbage, all moist and sticky. I was evidently under an evil principality, for I never hesitated an instant but reached down, scooped it up into my waiting apron and bolted for the side door leading into the woodshed.

By that time, my greed was consumed by fear and my one thought was, "How can I get rid of this awful thing before anyone sees me?" The woodshed was too exposed for a hiding place but I had a sudden inspiration. Right in my line of vision was the clump of cedars standing beside the station path, not many yards away. If I could get there quickly and throw that lump of iniquity under the low growing branches, I might be saved.

Walking as rapidly as I could I dared not run I had almost reached my refuge when who should appear on the path, coming from the station but Papa Kelly. I was lost and I knew it. Guilt was written all over me but I tried to act as usual. Papa Kelly's eagle eye, however, knew something

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"Oh, just for a walk," I said.

"What have you got in your apron?" said he.

"Just a lump of sugar Mr. V. gave me," I lamely replied.

"Let me see it," said Papa Kelly, and so I opened my apron to show that dirty, brown piece of mischief, and that was enough.

His wrath exploded. He grabbed my wrist and I, half running to keep up with his angry strides, was taken back to the store. By that time the customer had left so that the question could be asked in a loud voice.

"V., did you give Corinna this lump of sugar?" "No," V. said, "I thought she would take a small one."

That short distance to the South Room was fraught with terror. I never had been spanked much and was dreadfully afraid of it, but there was no use pleading. I knew I had done wrong. So, hopeless arid terrified, I walked into the big, dimly-lit coat closet arid was given the outstanding spanking of my life.

I was no Spartan and I am sure I howled in a manner very satisfactory to Papa Kelly and the children in the adjoining room. Afterward, I was told to stand in the corner and "think it over." I had done a wicked thing, had deceived and stolen. My memory, mercifully, has blotted out what my immediate reception was by the children. Probably the affair was soon for-gotten by them, but it was days before Papa Kelly could look upon me with any hope in his eyes that I could ever again become a good Christian child.
 

IN describing the area back of the Kitchen, I must not forget the Ice House. It stood across a service roadway just north of the dairy, and not only was it most useful for our large family, but was architecturally an addition to the landscape.

It was a fairly large brick building with a high-pitched roof surmounted by an ornamental cupola, and its wide overhanging eaves gave it a bit of a foreign look. In the middle of the eastern front was a wide door, used to take in the ice during the yearly winter season of ice harvest. This was a time of great excitement for the children. The boys were allowed to hitch their sleds to the back of the empty ice bobs arid ride all the way over to the Willow Place Pond where the ice was cut. Then, after watching the process until they were satisfied, they would catch a ride back behind the loaded

bobs. Even the girls were given a ride occasionally in the empty bobs, sitting with the drivers on the way home.

The purposes for the ice house were many. Ice must be supplied to the dairy in large quantities, for cooling the milk, and to the big, home-made ice box in the basement of the Mansion for kitchen use. It was required also for the water-coolers in the court and children's department and for general table use in the dining-room. Another very important use for the ice was in refrigerating the fresh fruit and vegetables as they came from the garden and for the meat, when sent in from the farm. For this purpose, the southern end of the ice house was divided into two rooms (called the Keep) which were insulated by very thick outside partitions and doors, except for the wall next to the ice which was of wire screening, thus producing a temperature nearly artic.

The Store, Dairy and Ice House do not complete the tale of interest "out back," for behind those buildings there wandered a lazy brook. What an asset to any child is a brook, be it lazy or lively. This one was too sluggish for satisfactory water wheels, but it was good for surreptitious wading and as a hurdle for jumping.

It was on the hill beyond, though, that one found the real fun. For there Mr. Leonard kept his bees, two long rows of tidy white hives with bees always buzzing around in a most industrious manner yet never apparently scaring Mr. Leonard who, in long gloves, trousers tied at the ankle and white veiled hat, could safely do with them as he pleased. We children, standing at a respectful distance, would watch the delicate business of beekeeping for a while, but the kitchen garden just beyond soon called more loudly.

Here, in Mr. Seymour's model garden, were rows of red and black raspberries, blackberries and currants red, white and black, a big bed of strawberries, rows of succulent pieplant; and stretching out to the tall windbreak of close-set Norway spruces, sturdy barrier against western storms, were row upon row of peas, string beans, lima beans, beets, onions and sweet corn. The potatoes, tomatoes and asparagus were grown in a larger field elsewhere, but, wherever grown, the crops were under watchful care and were the best varieties to be found.

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The fruits of these gardens were for the family table, since the Community people set great store by fruits and vegetables and excelled in vegetable cookery, as they do today. If a visitor happened to arrive during a meatless period, he was served one of the famous Community omelets, corn or green beans cooked in cream, mashed potatoes and perhaps shortcake or ice cream and a cookie for dessert. No company guest ever asked for anything more.

The children's interest, however, was not entirely horticultural, for though we never filched boldly from the rarer fruits, there were several gooseberry bushes, little valued by our elders, where an ever-hungry child could eat its fill with a good conscience. Or, in the proper season, we might find on the ground the delicious, juicy Japanese plums, always legitimate forage.

Did children ever have such a wide field to rove in, so full of varied interests? And, if we minded the boundaries and the time schedule, how free we were and how unusually safe. I am still amazed by the wisdom and understanding of the people who planned the children's activities. There was sufficient restraint but always such a sense of wide freedom as to insure happiness and health

Then one day my mother told me I need no longer go to the Children's House but I could stay with her and she would take care of me all the time. That was wonderful but what did it mean? It meant, what of course I did not know, that John Humphrey Noyes then living in Canada, had just announced by letter that he thought the time had come to give up complex marriage, and that the Community members, insofar as possible, should marry as people did in the outside world and start the customary family life. This, he felt, could be carried on in the old Community home. The members could thus enjoy all the accustomed benefits as to household arrangements, care of the children, social entertainment and business management.

But the spirit of dissention was stronger than he realized and the marriage idea was quickly accepted and acted upon, but with it, followed naturally the sequel: a separate family life. What form the marriages should adopt, whether by church service or marriage by contract, was to be decided by a demonstration of both forms in the Big Hall to which the whole family was invited. We children and probably many of our elders as well were tremendously excited by this prospect, and watched, wide-eyed and impressed, as the performance began.

The marriage by contract came first and a sad spectacle it was to a child whose only ideas of marriage were the gorgeous affairs encountered in fairy tales. The scene was set upon a bare stage, its only furnishings a flat-topped desk and four straight-backed wooden chairs. When the excited audience was quiet, in from the wings came the contracting parties, two middleaged men, Mr. Erastus Hamilton and Mr. Otis Kellogg, dressed in dark business suits, and the two women they were to marry, Miss Elizabeth

Hutchins and Miss Olive Nash. The women were wearing dark, short dresses. Their hair was short and straight and they had apparently made no effort to beautify for the occasion. That would have been deemed vain and insincere.
The two couples to be married seated themselves in chairs on each side of the desk, then Mr. Towner, a former judge, came in from the anteroom and, standing at the end of the desk facing the assembly, read the contract aloud. The bridal couples then signed the contract and the deed was done. There was no kissing of the brides, and if they shook hands with Mr. Towner I don't remember it. Their one desire seemed to be to get out of the public eye as quickly as possible and become one of the audience about to witness the worldly show we were told would follow.

Mr. Herrick, who for some years before joining the Community, had been an Episcopal clergyman in New York City, appeared in his proper robes from a side door and took his place in front of the stage facing the audience. From the door opposite, Miss Lily and Mr. John walked in slowly, arm in arm, and took their places before Mr. Herrick.

By this time all our young hearts were beating high, for though Mr. John wore a dark business suit like the other men, pretty Miss Lily, who was the dazzling Josephine of the O.C. Pinafore and the most versatile actress of the Community stage, was dressed in a long dress of a beautiful jade green cotton with a slight train. She had made it herself and it set off her lovely figure and beautiful complexion in an entrancing manner. Her hair, though short, was naturally curly and was a mass of ringlets. Being an actress by instinct, she was as perfectly poised as an old stager in a familiar role.

The long Episcopalian service was not a word too long and the giving of the ring and the bridal kiss were the supreme touch of romance. After all was over, the bridal couple turned to meet their beglamored friends, to be kissed and congratulated. Homemade currant wine and fruit cake were then served to the grown-ups. What a thrilling scene! It was like a play on the stage, and there was no doubt in my mind which service the unmarried ones would choose; yet, I believe the Cragin wedding was the only church service used among the many marriages that followed. The contract form was short, simple and private and was the one always chosen.

My mother had had two children by Mr. Martin Kinsley, so, after the Break-up, they were among the first to marry. Fortunately they loved each other, and Uncle Martin, as I used to call him, was fond of me, so, it was easy to accept him as my father.

Then came the problem of finding suitable rooms for family living. The Mansion with its many small single rooms and large communal sitting rooms, was not adapted to it; so, for a short time, we had to live in rather

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cramped quarters in the Mansion, but soon the "Concrete" was allotted to us. "Concrete" an odd name for a house, wasn't it? For a long time I thought it applied to the type of house instead of the material of which it was made, and even now it seems a strange architectural fancy which set that charming little old-world cottage down in the northwest corner of the Quadrangle. But what a picture it made, with its wide overhanging eaves and its cream-colored walls so thickly covered with woodbine that in the fall it was a crimson glory. Inside, it was as perfectly fitted to our needs as if designed for us. There was a good-sized sitting room, two bedrooms and a lavatory, and for our baths we could use either the bathroom in the nearby Tontine or the Turkish Bath.

Father and Mother were given the simple furnishings of their old rooms, to which they added other needed things bought either from outside or from the Community auction, held in the Big Hall, of pieces no longer required for public use. Soon Mother, with her genius for pleasing arrangement of her surroundings, had created for us a home. We had a family home of our own, yet seemed still embraced by the old Mansion. We took our meals in the dining room as usual. My sister Margaret and brother Bobbie and I played with the other children on the playground and in the playhouse as we always had, and we could wander around in the Big House with even more freedom than before, the only difference being that now we were supervised by our own parents instead of by the Children's House guardians.

While we were living in the Concrete, Father was still one of the managers of the newly-formed company's big farm. Then the "Townerites," one of the two opposing parties which at the Break-up divided the ex-Communists, of which Father and Mother were ardent members, decided they no longer cared to encounter the frosty atmosphere of the "Noyesites" at every meal and would like better fare. With this ambition they projected the idea of starting a restaurant in the old company dining room, and offered Father a salary of $1,000 a year to organize and run it. This offer he gladly accepted, resigning his position as farm manager to take the new job.

It was interesting work for which he was ably fitted, as far as providing good food and service were concerned; but to make it pay presented a new problem. The boarders wanted better food, but it was hard for them to meet the advanced cost, although the prices charged were even then ruinously low. There was also the new and haunting factor of "overhead," e.g., Father's salary and wages for hired help. This was the ex-Perfectionists' first real lesson in the vicissitudes of living in the outside world where everything must be paid for in money or its equivalent.

When Father was given the $1,000 salary, which to our eyes seemed

princely and which was in fact equal to that of the president of the new Oneida Community, Ltd., he, being quite inexperienced in worldly finance, dared buy the beautiful Clark estate situated on the Seneca Turnpike, a mile and a half from the Mansion. This house was a revelation of luxury. Mr. and Mrs. Clark had died and the estate was left to Mrs. Clark's spinster sister, a Miss Cobb, who put it up for sale at a bargain price $6,000 I think we paid, for house, barns and sixty acres of land!
But what a house! Luxurious beyond anything I had ever seen! There were three parlors, all richly papered, each with a marble mantelpiece and fireplace, a large guest bedroom, dining room, kitchen and pantries on the ground floor. The dining room didn't quite keep up with the elegance of the front rooms but was a pleasant room and adequate, as were the kitchen and pantries. Leading out of the back parlor was a conservatory at least forty feet long through which one passed to a well-appointed toilet.

The front hall by which one entered, was hung with a beautiful paper in a black and white Florentine design, and the floor was covered by a linoleum in large black and white squares. The woodwork was white, which contrasted well with the winding staircase of mahogany and the large ornate mahogany hat and umbrella stand.

Upstairs there were four fine large bedrooms to the right and left of a wide hall, every room as beautifully papered as were the rooms downstairs. Over the kitchen and dining room were three bedrooms for servants.

With the house, much to our delight, came two handsome sets of bedroom furniture with marvelous springs and mattresses of white curled hair for the beds. Besides these, there were furnishings for two other bedrooms, not quite so fine but better than any we had ever seen before, and as a glimpse into the elegance in which the Clark's lived, they had left behind in the buttery several plates of the most delicate eggshell china and three slender-stemmed champagne glasses. Left behind also, in an upstairs' closet, were piles of old Harpers and Atlantic Monthlys, showing something of their intellectual interests.

The lawn in front of the house, before it was ruined by the railroad, extended in a gentle slope to the highway, which occupied the space now taken up by the railroad. The property was defined by a low stone wall with a coping of granite on which was set a low green wrought iron fence, ending at the driveway in wrought iron gateposts. The driveway swept to the left up to the horse block at the end of the porch, then curved back to the carriage house before returning to the gateway.

The real pride of the lawn was its trees, great noble beeches and horsechestnuts in the front, while to the right of the driveway was a promising grove of young maples. At the left of the house were the remains of a once

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lovely flower garden, leading on to a kitchen garden with raspberries, blackberries, currants and strawberries, and on beyond up to a hillside orchard.

The barns were spacious and there was even a small ice house. All in all, a place to yearn over and dream over, but there wasn't enough tillable ground to support it. Much of the acreage lay in a delectable pasture through which ran a lazy brook. The cows loved it but it couldn't feed a large dairy herd, so that, in the end, all that beauty had to go. I never heard Mother or Father mourn over its loss they were too Spartan for that but I was just reaching the romantic age, had just read Jane Eyre and to me it was the loss of Thomfield Hall.

The land itself had been long untended and unproductive but the house was a beautiful example of the rural neo-classic architecture, still sound and fine, and there we lived for two and a half years. Father, while running the restaurant, drove over and back daily and had no time for farming but when the restaurant proved a failure and he had to rely on the proceeds of a badly run-down 60-acre farm he soon saw that some change must be made. Luckily, just at this time the West Shore Railroad was about to build its new line parallel to the Turnpike on which our house fronted, and much adjacent property, including ours, was condemned in order to get the right-of-way. For us it proved a Godsend. The railroad needed several rods in depth cut off from the front of our beautiful lawn and they paid Father $2,700 for it. With that and the price he was able to get from the sale of the place he was able to buy the old Hubbard farm of 150 acres, located at the Four Corners, not far from the Mansion House. This farm did not compare with the Clark place in attractiveness but it had more than twice the acreage of tillable land, including a five-acre hop field, and its being so near the old home compensated for the simple exterior of the farmhouse.

Now Father and Mother had really left Eden. Mother had become the hard-working wife of a hard-working farmer but never did they complain. They had made their choice and were willing to abide by the results.

Mother must often have remembered the days when singing was her chief delight and sometimes, when I would be playing the simpler accompaniments of her old songs on the organ, she would suddenly appear from the kitchen and sing as she did in the olden days, her tone as rich and full as ever with no sign that it had suffered from lack of practice. Indeed, she sang softly to herself much of the time when about her work, sang many of her old songs, hymns, plantation songs and negro spirituals.

These, Maggie, Bobbie and I soon learned and often, especially on winter evenings, we would sit around the sitting room stove and sing together for an hour before bedtime. A precious memory to this day.

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THE Hubbard farm, to which we moved upon leaving the Clark House, was situated on the highway between Turkey Street and the Community Mansion, only one quarter of a mile away, and this nearness to our old home was all that consoled me for losing the beauty of the Clark place. The Hubbard house was simply a very decent farm-house of white clapboard of a type quite common through the countryside and had no conveniences such as we had been used to. There was no running water and no bathroom. All the drinking water had to be pumped from a well thirty feet from the house and the soft water we used for washing clothes and dishes we pumped by hand from a cistern underneath the kitchen floor - when we had had sufficient rain.

For heat, instead of the furnace heat we had at the Clark house or the steam heat we enjoyed at the Mansion, we had a coal range which heated the kitchen and dining-room and a large base-burner for heating the sitting-room and two adjoining bedrooms. In mild weather a suggestion of heat could be felt from the stovepipe which went up to the chimney that went through the bedroom Meg and I used. The other upstairs bedrooms were almost as cold as the weather outside but we got used to it, taking heated flatirons to bed with us and sleeping under a mountain of covers. What ordinary farm folk did for baths, I do not know. We were still Community members and use of the Turkish Bath was one of our privileges.

We now lived near enough to the Mansion so we could take part in all the social events and attend the school. Comparison between the Clark place and the hard work and drawbacks of farm life gradually receded into the background and we children began to see the attractions of a farm as seen through the eyes of the Mansion House children who were frequent visitors.

When living in the Children's House, once in a while small groups of children would be taken to the Community horse-barn or cow-barn where we would see the heads or rear-ends of the horses and cows, but at our farm there was a small zoo to be seen all at one time, horses and cows in the farm yard, pigs and piglets, hens and chickens and a friendly dog and cat. If the visit was timed at the right hour, the milking would be in progress all done by hand or it would be feeding-time and there would be something the children could do to help. Then, as the finishing touch to the day's enjoyment, Aunt Alice, as many of the children called Mother, always kept a well-filled cookie and doughnut jar and the children were welcome to help themselves.

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Occasionally really gay events would take place. There would be a birthday to be celebrated and Mother was renowned among the children for her parties. During the winter there would be at least one molasses candy-pull and a straw ride when the sleighing was good and the moon riding high. That was fun! A bob-sleigh drawn by two horses, piled with fresh, clean straw and plenty of blankets and buffalo robes and a dozen happy, hearty children, singing at the top of their lungs to the accompaniment of sleigh bells. We would be gone for an hour or more then come home to hot cocoa and cookies.

The farm itself, on which our livelihood depended, was a very good one. There was a sugar bush, fine pasturage for a good-sized dairy herd, plenty of land for raising wheat, oats and hay and a five-acre hop field in thriving condition. For several years before our ownership of the farm, hops had been the best-paying crop that could be raised and modest fortunes had been made all up and down the valley. Prices had risen steadily and naturally more and more fields had been set out. Then, just the year before we bought the farm, the crash came. The price of hops had reached $1.25 a pound. The wise ones sold. The greedy ones held on and, in the end, were glad to get five cents a pound. Some used their hops for bedding the cattle rather than sell at that price.

Father had known the recent history of the hop market but, with most of the hop-growers, felt sure that the normal price of between 25 and 50 cents a pound would return, but it never did. The buyers began to rely on the hops raised in Oregon and Washington, found them of better quality, and the days of profitable hop-raising in New York State were over.

Father kept on raising them for five years, however, though it meant a lot of hard work and no profit. Then he cried quits and used the field for other crops. One was potatoes. They had been bringing high prices - 75 cents, then a dollar a bushel. Everyone planted a big crop and it looked most promising. Then the rains came, day after day, rain, rain and more rain, and when the weather finally cleared the potatoes had rotted in the ground.

Today it still comes back to me painfully the awful discouragement that farmers have to face, the incessant hard labor and yet they have the courage to go on. Wonderful men! That was my father's part, to see his labor gone for nought. My mother had to share in his bitter disappointment, too, and besides caring for our family, provide bed and board for three hired men. Though we tried to keep a hired girl they were not easily found. Even in those days girls didn't like to work on a farm.

A year before we moved to the farm, Mr. Abram Burt and his brotherin-law, Manley Aiken, caught Exodus Fever, bought land just beyond the Hamilton Bridge on the left side of the road and built a house large enough

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for their two families. Both men were in company employ. Shortly after that, Mr. Orrin Wright, then a foreman at the factory, bought the next lot and Mr. Frank Wayland-Smith, superintendent at the factory, his wife being the bookkeeper there, also took the lot adjoining on the corner opposite our house. Both men built their barns first and lived in them a year while building their homes. Thus we had a group of five families, all old Community friends, with a deep acquaintance that few people know, but Father and Mother were the only ones completely on their own in meeting the vicissitudes of the outside world without company support, and, to add to their responsibilities, our family had increased. My second brother, Martin, was born while we were still living at the Clark House, a healthy, happy child and a great addition to the family. Two and a half years later my sister, Alice, was born, another healthy and happy child, as well-loved but born under quite different conditions. We were then living at the Hubbard farm, hired girls were hard to get, money was scarce. To help provide for the children's needs, Mother borrowed a chain-making machine from the company factory - a simple affair operated by a foot treadle - and managed to make a hundred or more chains a day, besides running the house, caring for the children and doing the family sewing. I don't know how she did it. She certainly had very little time to herself. I had to go to school, of course, but I could do a good deal to help, mornings and afternoons after school, and I was glad to do it. I loved my mother deeply and helping her was a pleasure, not a sacrifice.

I am painting a pretty drab picture of our life on the farm, I am afraid, but being the oldest and of a rather serious turn of mind, that is the way it looked to me much of the time. The other children, however, had a good time, were a happy lot, too young to be aware of crop failures or the ever-haunting interest on the mortgage. They knew how to play and had time for it. I was not a playing child. If I had leisure, I read. I loved to read, an escape, perhaps, from the hum-drum of housework, but Miss Beulah, the librarian at the Mansion, had introduced me to Dickens and I was absorbed in all he wrote. It implanted in me such a love of England that, when I visited that country many years later, I felt I had come home.

Then came our year of deep sorrow. In September of 1889 another little baby was born. I had dreaded his coming. It seemed to me that Mother had more than enough work to do and I greatly feared the ordeal of childbirth but she went through it well and the little boy was a beautiful child with dark hair and eyes, a fair skin, an irresistible smile and the sweetest, sunniest disposition imaginable.

Mother said he was ten months old when he was born which accounted perhaps for his precocity, for he began very early to smile and coo and would

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put up his arms whenever anyone approached his cradle, seeming to want to become an active member of the family. Caring for him was pure joy.

He was strong and healthy, too, but flu was in the neighborhood that year and one day, when he was three months old, he was taken with what Mother thought to be only a hard cold. All the old-fashioned remedies were applied but, by the third day, he was evidently growing worse and Mother said we must have the doctor. There were no home telephones in those days so, to get the doctor, Father had to drive the four miles through snow-drifted roads and, when at last they arrived, it was too late, our precious little Reggie had left us.

It seemed heart-breaking, unbearable to us all. Could life ever seem the same again? It completely prostrated Mother for several days and when she got up she was silent and unsmiling. Just than a book-peddler came to the door selling a book explaining the beliefs of the Latter Day Saints and Mother, looking for some spiritual help, bought it but it only made her brood the more and search the harder to find in what way she had transgressed to merit such punishment. She finally decided we had all been too pleasure-seeking and grew so morbid that Father said she must get away from home awhile. He got Aunt Jane to stay with us children, bought Mother a new coat and hat, had the carriage fixed so he could drive two horses, and took her to Niagara Falls to visit Uncle Myron's family. It was a three-day drive through a continuously changing scene and, though they were gone only ten days in all, it did Mother a world of good and she seemed nearly her old self upon her return. The old Community-training had asserted itself. She must still live for others and she could smile again and sing about her work.

Fortunately for us children, school had become exciting. The Kenwood Academy, a private preparatory school established at the Mansion by a number of its benevolent residents, was flourishing and we were able to attend a really good school free. We had three classes, the primary, intermediate and college preparatory, and three good teachers, two from outside: Professor Loomis, a Colgate graduate and well-qualified to take on all the college preparatory studies, Miss Hyde to cover the intermediate work and Maud Barron, one of our own women, who had had a course at a Normal College, to teach the primary grades.

The advent of Nellie Hyde, the new intermediate grades teacher, was to many of us the hand of Providence. Until that time we lived very secluded lives and our manners, while usually polite and kind, when compared with Nellie's poise and tact, were crude and hobbledehoy. In her we saw, besides a lovely, gifted woman, a person who, while she had known sophisticated society, was glad to give us the best of it without ever making us feel

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our deficiencies. After an hour spent with her, one went away feeling new possibilities in one's self. Musically she was an inspiration, for she had a beautiful, well-trained contralto voice, played a most sympathetic accompaniment and could improvise for any group singing.

Our musical ambitions took a great leap forward, for it was in the field of music that she was completely at home and proficient. In fact, I don't believe her real interest was ever in school teaching. Why she ever took it up I often wondered, for it wasn't in her nature to demand anything, even from her pupils. We learned our lesson as well as we could to please her, not because she insisted on it.

Suddenly, during this school year, life began to take on a more worldly flavor. We were all growing up. College was never in the picture for me. My parents couldn't afford it but I loved to learn and took all the required work except Greek and the advanced Latin, Cicero and Virgil. Our schoolrooms occupied all the rooms on the north side of the first floor of the New House and what is now the present library, where many of the recitations were held. Our desks were all in the big room under the eye of Professor Loomis and Maud Barron. Luckily my desk was in the front row, so I could hear the recitations of the three or four students taking Greek. I was so enchanted by the sound of it that I even learned some parts of the verbs because they were so musical. I was equally pleased by the sound and translation of the Latin, though I never went beyond Caesar, myself.

I don't know who started the project - Pierrepont, I presume, since he had a year at Colgate Academy and had joined a fraternity there - at any rate, we soon had an active Greek letter society in the school, the Theta Pi, with programs for general entertainment, including music, all quite amateurish but lots of fun and generally educational.

The summer vacation when I was twelve I began working a few hours a week in the Fruit House, as our canning factory was called. The first summer I earned 31/2 cents an hour, a total of $5.00 for the season. The next year I worked longer hours and earned $10.00, which was a real help toward Christmas buying and Mother let me spend a small sum for myself at Bemis' 5 & 10 cent store in Oneida. This was my first experience of shopping and I was dazzled beyond words, finding bargains I never dreamed of. Cologne sold at five cents a bottle, tiny bottles to be sure, but real cologne nevertheless, with an odor I had never known before, and a name - Frangipani - as exotic as its fragrance.

The summer I was fourteen I was able to work regularly, ten hours a day in the Fruit House. At first the women I worked with stood a little aloof, but they soon found me friendly, asking no favors and getting none, and I made many friends, grew to respect them highly and got an understanding

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of their problems I have always been thankful for. It was an experience which has enriched my life.

One woman I met there I shall never forget, for she was a kindred spirit. She loved to read but seldom had time for it so, when the work was especially dull, like stringing beans or looking over navy beans, we would manage to sit together and I would tell her the stories I had been reading, sometimes short ones, sometimes a whole book which would have to be told like a continued story. It whiled away many a dull hour and, if we made our fingers fly and I spoke in a low voice, no one objected. By this time I was able to do the most particular work, grading the fruits and vegetables and fitting the fruit into glass jars and for this work I drew six cents an hour like the other women. In a rush season there was even a chance for overtime, though at no advanced wage. If it was corn-canning season I might be able to work till eleven o'clock at night. Then I could add 24 cents a day to my regular wage of $3.60 per week. Wonderful then, laughable today.

One thing I still marvel at is that I never remember feeling tired. I liked to work and got deeply interested in whatever I was doing, but my daughter Barbara tells me now, in very learned terms, that I am a Somatotonic Mesomorph, which is a type that craves muscular activity, so my youthful labors were evidently not enjoyed because I was especially altruistic. I was merely obeying a compelling inner urge to use my muscles!

The next two summers I had a chance to "clerk" in the company store, housed in the western end of the Fruit House. It was the regular cracker-barrel type of country store, meeting most of the simple needs of the neighborhood, and included a stove at one end where farmers with a little time to spare could sit around and talk over the day's doings or the season's prospects with anyone who happened in, or with nice, genial Mr. Cornelius Hatch who ran the store. He was a grand man to work for, never finding fault and generous in his praise.

Our stock was quite varied, amusingly so, and I would go perhaps, from cutting a half-pound of cheese, down to the cellar for a quart of Porto Rico molasses, from there to get a gallon of kerosene in a small storehouse. Next might come another trip to the cellar for a couple of pounds of salt pork. This last errand often required that I roll up my sleeve, get a large steel hook and plunge my arm to the elbow into the brine in which the salt pork was kept. My next sale might be a pound of fine-cut tobacco for the pipe and a plug of Gold Rope chewing tobacco, followed by two sticks of candy, a Jackson ball and a pair of men's rubbers. We carried, of course, all sorts of food supplies and even had a small department of cheap cotton goods and notions, as we drew the trade of the farmers within a radius of five miles and from all the people working in the Fruit House.

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Eliot Hinds, my fellow clerk, and I were kept comfortably busy but certainly never over-worked, and Eliot was always prime entertainment. He was the grandson of Aunt Elizabeth Hawley and just as erratic in his thinking and actions as she, but always kind and generous and full of an unexpected humor. Many years later, when he became commanding officer of an escadrille of flyers in the first World War, the men's pay having been delayed and they needing shoes badly, he cabled his business partner to send them shoes from home, charging them to his account. That was an example of his kindness and one didn't wonder that his company loved him and mourned his death when he was killed in a plane accident only a few days before he was to be retired on account of age.

I finished school when I was eighteen. I was always interested in my studies, deeply so, but after Miss Hyde left, the glamour was gone and school became simply a regular, work-a-day routine and I was very thankful if there were no unavoidable interruptions. As it was, I was taken sick two weeks before graduation and couldn't graduate with the class, which was a disappointment but, as I was not going to college, it wasn't seriously important. What was important was the fact that I had been offered work in the office at the Niagara Falls factory and, though I knew nothing about bookkeeping, they were willing to teach me and Uncle Myron had offered me a home with his family.

The one unhappy thought in the whole plan was leaving Mother without the help I had been able to give her, but I needn't have worried, for no sooner had I left home than my sister Margaret, who, up to that point, I had considered rather irresponsible, came forward and quietly assumed all the duties I had done and even took over the making of the bread, which I had never done.

The Niagara Falls experience was valuable and I could see it stretching out for years or at least until I married, but when I went home for Christmas I was told I could have a bookkeeping position in the office at the Trap Factory in Sherrill. This I seized upon at once for, though I had had a wonderful home at Uncle Myron's, I was always homesick at Niagara Falls and the chance to live in my own home while working was a great blessing.

I had worked at the Trap Factory only three weeks, however, when a better position was offered me, keeping the Fruit and Hardware Ledger at the Home Office at the Mansion under my uncle, Mr. John Cragin, a good and patient teacher and a delightful associate. His nature was an unusual combination of ardent fanaticism and subtle humor and, as the atmosphere of the office was quite relaxed, we had many a good laugh over his stories. Here in this pleasant place I worked until I was married two years later.

In the meantime, affairs had changed decidedly for the better at home.

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Father Kinsley was offered the position of manager of the store, taking Meg as bookkeeper, and had at the same time an opportunity to sell the farm very advantageously. Under this arrangement, the family retained the house, barn and a good garden plot, but all the burden and uncertainty of farm work and hired help was gone, and he and Mother felt freer than at any time since we left the Clark place. Father was once more in the company employ with an assured income, a great relief.
As it happened, after about two years, the store business was sold to an outsider, but Father was given a position supervising the outside maintenance of the Company's home domain and decided to sell the farm-house and take rooms in the Mansion. So it came about that, after surviving gallantly some hard experience in the outside world, Father and Mother were glad to rejoin old friends under the roof of the old home. My brothers, Bob and Marty, and little sister Alice were growing up. I was no longer needed at home. Since Pierrepont and I had been engaged for a year, I now felt I could get married without being utterly selfish, and did so on June 26, 1894.

From this point on, Pierrepont has told enough of my story which became our story except for an account of our wedding which turned into such a Community affair that I think it should be recorded. There had not been a wedding in the Big Hall since the Cragin wedding at the time of the Break-up, and everyone insisted that ours should take place in the Hall and all the home folks be invited.

It seemed an awful ordeal to me but it didn't trouble Pierrepont at all, so presently extensive preparations got under way. Invitations were sent out to all old Community members at Niagara Falls and New York and everyone looked on it as an excuse for a gathering of the clans and an old-home week. People who had not seen the old place for years wrote for rooms in the Mansion and in some way accommodations were found. As these old friends began to assemble, a few days before the wedding, the atmosphere was charged with such a spirit of love and fellowship that it seemed fairly Pentecostal. Everyone wanted to help. If there were peas to be shelled for dinner, in no time a large group would assemble under the big basswood tree in the Quad., the work would be quickly done and a lot of visiting with old friends carried on at the same time.

Then, to my surprise, wedding presents began to pour in. Mother had given me a wonderful supply of household linen, pillows and blankets, and Grandmother had given a set of dishes and table silver, but since it was well-known that Pierrepont and I were starting out on a very slendor income, everyone wanted to give, so that many practical things were given as well as books, pictures, bric-a-brac and money to spend as we pleased. These wedding gifts - to us, undreamed of largesse - were on display in

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the Upper Sitting Room and the whole family took a deep interest in the mounting treasures.

Our wedding, itself, was very simple. The younger people had taken over the decoration of the Hall and on the day of the wedding had gone out into the meadows to gather long-stemmed white daisies, ferns and wild roses with which they bordered the edge of the stage. This decoration was quite in keeping with the simplicity of the whole affair, for we knew nothing of the usual formalities of a public wedding and cared less.

We had six bridesmaids, my sister, Margaret, and Pierrepont's five sisters, and six groomsmen but no ushers, no wedding march and no giving of the bride. Pierrepont and I simply walked up the aisle together and took our places before the minister who stood in front of the stage, the bridesmaids, each with a groomsman, following and ranging themselves on either side of us. The short service was soon over and we turned around to receive congratulations. Afterward, everyone dispersed to the dining room where ice cream, cake and coffee were served while Pierrepont and I took the opportunity to change our clothes and get away quietly before our friends knew we were gone.

And so ended my old life as an Oneida Community child and so began my new life as a wife and mother in the great outside world. New York City was to be our new home. It was a wrench to leave the old home, old friends, my own dear family, and I would have been comforted if I could have known then that in less than six months we would have left New York for good, Pierrepont would be appointed superintendent of the plant at Niagara Falls and we should go there to live.

For three years we lived at the Stone Cottage, often going back to Ken-wood to visit, then Pierrepont was given responsibility for the other businesses and it was necessary for him to spend more time at Kenwood and we moved back. Home once more in the house where we were born. Oh blessed day! Our lives indeed are fallen in pleasant places, therefore our hearts are glad.
 

Having taken the very worldly step of marriage, there were some, the more adventurous ones, who wanted to see something of the world. Someone or something had infected them with the Western fever. They were looking not for gold but for a livelihood as attractive and sensible as fruitraising, since at that time California was being painted in irresistibly glow-

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ing colors for the eyes of all weather-bound Easterners to see. Southern California was the great El Dorado. Oranges, lemons, almonds and walnuts were the promised bonanza. According to the stories told, all one need do to reap this glorious harvest was a little light and pleasant farming, whereupon the luscious fruit would almost fall in one's lap.

The members of this group were all the so-called "Secessionists." Mr. Hinds and Judge Towner were the chief promoters of the scheme but were never active in the practical matters of selecting the site of the new experiment. Frederick Marks, one of the O.C.'s best builders and a natural executive, was the man appointed by the group to "spy out the land."

Why land in the vicinity of Santa Ana was chosen, I never heard. Probably it was pictured very attractively as to climate and horticultural advantages. The price of land, too, must have been a big factor in Mr. Mark's decision, since the group had only a small amount of capital, all told. He finally settled on a 550-acre ranch owned by a Widow Ross, which he purchased by a small down payment and a promissory note secured by a mortgage.

The Widow Ross, so it was learned afterward, never expected the mortgage could be paid by a bunch of eastern tenderfoots, but she had never met any Community-trained men and women before. In a month's time the group, fifteen strong, men, women and children, had set out to see and settle in the Promised Land. In the early 80's, travel west, even by train, was a fairly primitive affair, if you traveled "tourist." This meant that you took your own blankets and pillows for your bunks, furnished and cooked your own food on the one stove at the end of the car, which was also the only heat provided. Here again, Community-training proved an asset. Riggorous conditions daunted them not at all; and when, at Albuquerque, they were held up two days waiting for a troop of U.S. Cavalry to clear out a band of hostile Indians led by Geronimo, a touch of melodrama was added to the expedition which gave them a thrill they never forgot.

There was only one house on the property bought, and into this Mr. Marks moved his family and his wife's father. Where the remaining nine were housed I cannot find out, so here I must leave them. However it was, after a few years of hard work and rigid economy, they prospered and were able to pay off the mortgage. Most of them were well content in their new home, and few of them ever returned even for a visit to the old home and old friends.

At first, however, they could not get away from the old instinct for joint enterprise. They migrated in a group, bought their land together and arranged amicably how much each family should save toward payment of the joint debt. After that, the families became quite independent, took up

other businesses besides ranching, and turned more or less into regulation World's Folks, though never forgetting, I am sure, the many advantages and deep spiritual experiences of their communal life at O.C.
 

The question now arises, did George Burnham propose that the Doctor join him in buying a printing business in New York City or did the idea first sprout in the Doctor's brain? It doesn't matter which way. It was a good idea and for quite a time brought good results, for George Burnham was perfectly fitted by nature and training to make a success of any commercial venture he might undertake.

He was a product of the old Oneida Community, to start with, and most fortunately endowed with good looks, a good brain and a most attractive personality. Why he ever left the Oneida Community I never heard, but one can easily imagine that, given the independent spirit which his features denoted, he would be rather intractable to Community discipline and would choose to go out into the world alone rather than to be subject to it.

Luckily he had learned to run the printing presses at the O.C. and had a taste for that kind of work, so, in taking the regulation stipend for departing members, he went at once to a large printing house in Cincinnati and stayed with them long enough to learn thoroughly the whole business. It was, therefore, a widely experienced man that the Doctor was taking on as a partner. There was one more asset, too, for the Doctor's wife, Marion, was George's sister, which would tend to make the tie permanent.

All that was needed now was capital with which to buy and start a business, and this the Doctor was prepared to furnish through the sale of the O.C. stock belonging to himself, his wife and probably his mother-in-law, who was to live with his family.

It wasn't a princely sum, but by living frugally, taking in Edwin Burn-

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ham, another brother who had been an expert accountant at the O.C., and his wife and another O.C. man, Frank Tuttle, all the positions would be covered. Marion and Ida Kate, Edwin's wife, were experienced typesetters on the Oneida Circular. The women, therefore, would do the typesetting. Frank Tuttle and the Doctor would run the presses under George's supervision. Edwin would keep all accounts and George would be General Manager and, as it turned out, a high-powered salesman: a perfect Community affair and all permeated by a spirit of love and unity.

Of course it prospered - it was bound to - and went on in this pleasant groove for a number of years until the profits were so good that it was thought they could afford to hire help to do the typesetting, which the women had done for so long, and to hire men to run the presses. This, the Doctor felt afterward, was a mistake, a demoralizing influence; however, the business would probably have survived had it not been for an unforseen happening, the death of George Burnham. He was stricken with pneumonia and, in those days before penicillin, death followed quickly.

It was heartbreaking emotionally but a mortal blow to the business, for none of the others was capable of taking his place. He was the kingpin. Then somewhat later Ida Kate Burnham - dear, gentle Ida Kate - died after a short illness. By this time the business was staggering badly in spite of the men's best efforts; and when, two years later, Edwin Burnham's death followed, Dr. Noyes saw that the end of the enterprise had come and that he had better liquidate whatever assets remained and retire to Oneida.

He had been elected president of the Oneida Community Limited in 1895, but because of the exigencies of George H. Bumliam & Company, had not been able to spend much time in Oneida, except as Pierrepont called on him. Now he could live and enjoy the restful friendliness of the blessed Mansion House, ever-welcoming mother to us all, for the rest of his life.

The years in New York were years of bitter struggle for which the Doctor was ill-adapted in temperament and physique, but he went through them heroically and must have found deep satisfaction in so proving his courage.
 

The departure of a group of old Community members was necessitated by the needs of the business. Probably it was early in 1881, as Mr. Myron Kinsley had moved the spoon business there from Wallingford, in order that the company could use the newly developed Niagara Falls hydraulic power.

Mr. Kinsley had been made superintendent of the spoon business after

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the death of Charlie Cragin; and, as he naturally would have to live at Niagara Falls, he sent for his family, then a wife and one child, his father Albert Kinsley and his step-mother, renting a house for them at Suspension Bridge while he built a more commodious one in the city of Niagara Falls, where the factory was located.

Mrs. Helen Barron, one of the Community's most experienced accountants, was put in charge of the factory office, and a position on the maintenance staff was held by Mr. Barron. In true Community fashion they were invited to live with the Kinsley's while they built a home in Niagara Falls.

Within the next year and a half George Miller, Edwin Bumliam and Daniel Kelly and their families moved to Niagara Falls, the first two finding employment in the selling and factory office, Mr. Kelly to become as~stant manager, thus making a nucleus of five families on the American side of the river.

It has always interested me to observe the way in which all Community-trained people tend to cling together. If, for some reason, one of them moved from the home center, others were always sure to follow. In the case of Myron Kinsley, no sooner had his house at Niagara Falls been finished than he sent to Oneida for his wife's mother and two half-sisters. The younger women were to learn to inspect the finished silverware. Then came Amos Reeve. He was to learn silverplating and later became the boss plater. After him came James Conant, a connection of Myron's step-mother; and, after I finished at the Kenwood Academy and was offered a position in the factory office, Uncle Myron asked me to make my home with his family also. He was an outstanding example of the Community spirit of sharing. His one idea seemed to be to spread happiness and good will. Meanwhile, across the river, on the Canadian side, another group of old O.C. friends was assembling, staunch followers of J.H.N. who wished to dedicate the rest of their lives to his service - Erastus Hamilton, Henry Thayer, John Sears, William Kelly, John R. Lord and Theodore Pitt.

When Mr. Noyes left the Community in June, 1877, he, accompanied by Mr. Theodore Pitt, went directly to the home of Walter Brett at Strathroy, Ontario. Mr. Brett was a devoted believer in J.H.N.'s theories, although he had never visited Oneida. There J.H.N. stayed for eight months, living uncomplainly in very primitive conditions, since his host was poor, the house small and the family large. When at last affairs at Oneida had been sufficiently organized so that the leaders could give consideration to Mr. Noyes' needs, it was decided to buy a home large enough to accommodate him and his wife and a small staff to maintain it, and to allow him $150 a month for his lifetime.

The home chosen was a fine old estate situated on a terraced hillside

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nearly opposite the American Falls, commanding also a view of the Horseshoe Falls, and here J.H.N. established himself, his wife and his sister, Harriet Skinner. To carry on the household, Miss Jane Kinsley, Mrs. Ellen Miller and Miss Chloe Seymour gladly gave their services without remuneration in the old Community tradition, as did Mr. Henry Seymour, who devoted himself to the care of a wonderful fruit and vegetable garden, and Mr. Pitt who acted as Mr. Noyes' secretary and liaison when necessary, with the outside world.

The house itself was quite picturesque. It was built of gray stone with two gables on the broad second storey front and all the upper windows were diamond-paned. At the front, on the lower floor, were a spacious parlor, dining-room and bedroom with French windows leading out onto a wide verandah. In the rear was a large and homey kitchen and one bedroom separated from the front rooms by a hallway and staircase leading to the five, fine bedrooms above. The whole house was nicely adequate for the needs of a large family.

No sooner had the Stone Cottage family - Stone Cottage was the name the new home at once acquired - settled itself comfortably, than a call came for the resumption of the old-time family meeting, to be held on Sunday afternoons when the busy O.C. office or factory workers were free. After the meeting was over, the friends remained for a while to reminisce and report on the affairs of Community people since the Break-up. Home Talks were resumed and, though they were never published, according to Mr. Robert Parker's account, they were taken down by an amateur stenographer and many considered them among Mr. Noyes' most inspired utterances - indeed the most inspired, I should say, for he had risen to a height of selflessness he had never known before.

With a large home and settled income, Mr. Noyes now felt he could offer a home and support to any of his nine younger children whose mothers wished to relinquish their care of them. Only his two sons Holton and Humphrey accepted the offer at first, but Pierrepont spent almost a year there in 1884. Later Gertrude, after her mother's death, lived there till her father died in April, 1886. His nephew George W., too, became a permanent member of the family, one Mr. Noyes greatly valued for his innate spiritual quality.

Now with four teen-age children at the Cottage and five more belonging to the other loyalist families living near, the problem of a home-supervised school arose. Was there room for one in any of the homes? There was not; so Mr. Noyes persuaded Mr. William Kelly and his wife, who were living with their three children in a tiny house across the railroad, to build a house on a part of the Stone Cottage land nearby, large enough to accommodate

his own family and two other loyalist families who wished to join the Cottage group.

The whole of the third floor of this new building was to be devoted to a schoolroom. The Kelly House, as it was always called, being a wooden structure and with no architectural pretensions, was quickly ready for use and soon a school of a most unique type was under way. The subjects chosen to be taught were those for whom teachers could be found among Cottage members. Mr. Noyes was to teach Hebrew. Mrs. Skinner the Greek alphabet and elementary Greek. Mr. James Herrick, who had taken Mr. Pitt's place as Mr. Noyes' man Friday, was to teach dancing and mathematics. Mr. Yoder, a recent and quite eccentric joiner, was the teacher of English.

How long the school lasted, I do not know. Not long, I think, as it was very loosely organized, and any knowledge gained was but a smattering of this and that and was regarded, by the boys at least, as an amusing daily joke.

I much doubt if Mr. Herrick gave a single lesson in dancing, and if he tutored the boys in mathematics it must have been orally, while on the way to Clifton to do the day's marketing, on which errand the boys usually accompanied him. As an instructor in Public Relations, however, he couldn't be surpassed, and the boys must have learned an unforgettable lesson in watching Mr. Herrick deal with people. Everything that had to be done was worthy of his best effort, and he would put into the task an enthusiasm which is seldom seen. He was a kindling spirit and a wonderful companion for the young people.

One of the favorite stories the boys used to tell was of his muscular prowess. It seems that they had tied a rope up to one of the topmost beams in the barn and each day would try to see how far they could climb it, hand over hand. At first they couldn't go far, though they struggled hard. Then one day, while they were practicing, Mr. Herrick happening by, stopped to watch them. Characteristically first giving them an encouraging word, he said, "I used to do that when I was young. Wonder if I could now." In a jiffy he had stripped off his coat, seized the rope and hand over hand was up at the top in record time! No wonder the boys admired him! Mr. Herrick continued to live with the Cottage family until Mr. Noyes died in April, 1886, at which time all the family returned to Oneida except Mr. Henry Seymour who stayed on as caretaker. In fact, he was still there when Pierrepont, having been made superintendent of the Niagara Falls factory, decided we could find no pleasanter place than the Cottage for our home, and there we lived for nearly five years. Constance, our first child, was born there.

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It took imagination to vizualize those three old buildings as giving adequate space for the making of large quantities of silverware, but adapting them for that use was very cleverly done and met the needs of the business until its growth would warrant building the splendid, up-to-date factory you see on the old site today.

That factory, built in 1925, looks more like a college building than a commercial plant. To me it is a joy to behold, on its terraced hill surrounded by flowering shrubs and gardens with the breath-taking grandeur of the falls always in view, a place for inspiration, a place to dream dreams.

I have thought of these departures as an exodus from Eden, and in a sense that is how it seemed, not only to me as a child, but, I believe, to many -perhaps most - of the older members of the Community. I have spoken, perhaps too much, of the rigors and hardships that were an unavoidable part of such an experiment. The discipline was strict; sacrifice of self for the benefit of the many was its central theme. It had, as I think of it now and as I read the accounts these dedicated men and women wrote of their lives at Oneida, an idyllic side which has been too little recorded.

As I read of them, they were happy lives, fulfilled lives, in many cases richer lives than would have been the case in what they called The World. Simple, uneducated farmers and workmen learned not only new skills but were introduced to larger ideas, greater knowledge, a more educated heart; women like my grandmother, who would probably have lived the toilsome and restricted life of a farmer's wife and drudge, were admitted to a larger society, a more varied and interesting experience. Those among them who came from more comfortable backgrounds, with more advantages and more education, had the privilege of sharing their greater learning with their friends. And above all, as I remember the men and women who nurtured

me, all had learned spiritual lessons of immense value. They had learned to live with one another in concord and content.

A quotation from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians was what the Community called its Rule of Life, and I believe that its members strove for it earnestly and without ceasing.

"For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need."

Those words might be a history of the Oneida Community, and I am proud to be its child.

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