He was plainly born great in that way, and had no need to achieve greatness in it.

As Father Hecker said of him long afterwards, "Diogenes and his tub would have been Alcott's ideal if he had carried it out.

But he never carried it out." Diogenes himself, it may be supposed, had his ideal included a family and an audience as well as a tub, might finally have come to hold that the finding of the latter was a mere detail, which could be entrusted indifferently to either of the two former or to both combined.

Somebody once described Fruitlands as a place where Mr.
Alcott looked benign and talked philosophy, while Mrs.Alcott and the children did the work.

Still, to look benign is a good deal for a man to do persistently in an adverse world, indifferent for the most part to the charms of "divine philosophy," and Mr.Alcott persevered in that exercise until his latest day.