He was morbidly shy and reserved, needing to be shielded from
his fellows, and obtaining the fruits of observation at second-hand. He
was therefore not amenable to the democratic influences at the
Community which enriched the others, and made them declare, in after
years, that the years or months spent there had been the most valuable
ones in their lives."
Messrs. W. B. Allen, Minot Pratt, Warren Burton, Charles Hosmer, Isaac
Hecker and George C. Leach, with Mr. Hawthorne, devoted most of their
time to outdoor farm work.
Many of the pupils became interested in the new life with which they
came in contact. It influenced them for good, and in after years they
were full of gratitude and praise for the help and moral tone it
imparted to them. An extract from a letter from Mr. Richard F. Fuller,
the father of Margaret Fuller, to Mr. Ripley at this time reads as
follows:--
"A lady asked me not long since where she should send her daughter to
school. I said at once, to the _Community_, for there she would
learn for the first time, perhaps, that all these matters of creed and
morals are not quite so well settled as to make thinking nowadays a
piece of supererogation, and would learn to distinguish between truth
and the 'sense sublime,' and the dead dogmas of the past.
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