It was the initial misfortune of the Brook-Farmers to establish themselves on a picturesque but gravelly and uncongenial soil, whose poverty went very far toward compassing the collapse of their undertaking.
Not all of the ministers whose names have just been mentioned were of one mind, either as to the special evils to be counteracted or the remedies which might be tentatively applied.

Three different associations took their rise from among this handful of earnest seekers after better social methods.

Mr.Ballou, who headed one of these, believed that unity and cohesion could be most surely obtained by a frank avowal of beliefs, aims, and practices, to which all present and future associates would be expected to conform.

Mrs.
Kirby, whose interesting volume* we have already quoted, says that the platform of this party bound them to abolitionism, anti-orthodoxy, women's rights, total abstinence, and opposition to war.

They established themselves at Hopedale, Massachusetts, where, so far as our knowledge goes, some vestige of them may still remain, though the analogies and probabilities are all against such a survival.