out,—

   "'Well, what next?'

   "None of us were prepared for such a sudden and complete wreck of our Arcadian scheme. The foundations had been sapped before, it is true; but we had not perceived it; and now, in two short days, the whole edifice tumbled about our ears. Though it was inevitable, we felt a shock of sorrow, and a silence fell upon us. Only that scamp of a Perkins Brown, chuckling and rubbing his boot, really rejoiced. I could have kicked him.

   "We all went to bed, feeling that the charm of our Arcadian life was over.... In the first revulsion of feeling, I was perhaps unjust to my associates. I see now, more clearly, the causes of those vagaries, which originated in a genuine aspiration, and failed from an ignorance of the true nature of Man, quite as much as from the egotism of the individuals. Other attempts at reorganizing Society were made about the same time by men of culture and experience, but in the A.C. we had neither. Our leaders had caught a few half-truths, which, in their minds, were speedly warped into errors." ...—

    The Atlantic Monthly

   , February, 1862.

   A Legend of the Lower Hudson.

   The days were at their longest,

   The heat was at its strongest,

    When Brown, old friend and true,

   Wrote thus: "Dear Jack, why swelter

   In town when shade and shelter

    Are waiting here for you?

   Quit Bulls and Bears and gambling,

   For rural sports and rambling

    Forsake your Wall Street tricks;

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