William Dean Howells

“ Marriage is not held to be sinful or dishonorable. “Few things,” said one of the elders, “are more pleasing to us than the sight of a happy young couple, living rightly in their order,” but marriage is earthly and human, and celibacy is divine; as the thoughts are turned to higher things, they forsake husband or wife. Nevertheless, if their young women will marry, the Shakers claim the satisfaction of thinking that they have received in the community the best possible training for wives and mothers, — that they have been taught diligence, economy and all branches of domestic knowledge. ”

“ In a community it must be that the individual genius is largely sacrificed to the common purpose and tendency, and yet I believe that among the Shakers the sacrifice is compelled only by the private conscience. ”

“ One bad effect of the present decrease, which all thoughtful Shakers deplore, is the employment of hired labor. This, as communists, they feel to be wrong; but they are loath either to alienate their land or to let it lie idle. A strange and sad state of things results: the most profitable crop that they can now raise is timber, which they harvest once in thirty years, and which it costs nothing to cultivate, whereas it costs more to plant and reap the ordinary farm-crops, at the present rate of farm labor, than the crops will sell for. ”

“ In the words of Elder Fraser, of Shirley, the Shakers claim that their system is “based on the fact that each man has in himself a higher and a lower life,” and that Shakerism “is a manifestation of the higher to the exclusion of the lower life. Its object is to gather into one fold all who have risen above their natural propensities,” and they think with Paul that though those who marry do well, yet those who do not marry do better. ”

“ I believe the Shakers never strike their little wards, or employ any harsh measures with them.
One has somehow the impression that the young people of the Shakers are held in compulsory allegiance; but of course this is not at all the fact. As soon as they are old enough to take care of themselves they are entirely free to go or to stay. Undoubtedly they are constantly taught the advantages of the community over the world, and the superior merit of the virgin life over the married state, which they may be inclined to think of as they grow to be men and women. ”

“ We often touched upon this subject, which they face bravely and not unhopefully, and yet with a care concerning it that was not less than touching. What could it matter to those childless men and women whether any like them should inherit them in this world, to which, while living, they had turned so cold a shoulder? ”

“ The Shakers labor under the disadvantage of not being able to transmit a cumulative force of good example in their descendants; they must always be dealing, even in their own body, with the sons of pie and the daughters of doughnut; and Elder Fraser, who one Sunday spoke outright against these abominations, addressing the strangers present, will have to preach long and often the better culinary faith, which the Shakers received from the spirits (as they claim) , before he can reach the stomachs, at once poor and proud, of the dyspeptical world-outside. ”

“ Our Shaker friends are sometimes embarrassed by visitors who ask to be shown all over their buildings, forgetting that their houses are private houses; and I cannot promise the curious reader visiting Shirley a repetition of the favors done us, whom the Shakers were good enough to show all of their communal life that one could see. In each village is an edifice known as the Dwelling-House, which is separate from the office and the other buildings. In this are the rooms of the brothers and sisters, the kitchen and dining-room, and a large room for family meetings. ”

“ He wears, so long as he likes, the fashions of the world, but these make him look as odd in the family as the Shaker dress would outside of it, and he is commonly anxious to assume the garb of simplicity before his mundane clothing is worn out. After due time he may give his property to the family; if he ever leaves it, he receives back the principal of his contribution without interest; for his labor he has already received his support. There are no formalities observed when a new brother or sister comes among the Shakers. It is understood that they are to go as freely as they have come ”

“ Many of the younger people are averse from meat, following the example and precept of our good Elder Fraser, who for the last thirty-five years has kept his tough Scotch bloom fresh upon a diet that involves harm to no living creature, and at seventy looks as ruddy as few Americans at any time of life. ”

“ It is well to have one's name such a synonyme for honesty that anything called by it may be bought and sold with perfect confidence, and it is surely no harm to be noted for dressing out of the present fashion, or for dancing before the Lord. But when our summer had come to an end, and we had learned to know the Shakers for so many other qualities, we grew almost to resent their superficial renown among men. ”

“ There are no longer carpenters, blacksmiths, and shoemakers among the Shakers at Shirley, because their work can be more cheaply performed by the world-outside, and the shops once devoted to these trades now stand empty. The community still has the advantage of buying all provisions and materials at wholesale prices, but I doubt whether the cost of living within it is much less than it is among its uncommunized neighbors. ”

“ Yet it was not easy to be cheerful when in our drives about the country we came from time to time upon some grass-grown cellar where a farm-house once stood, or counted, within the circuit of a mile about the corners where we sojourned, a score of these monuments of adversity. It is not that the soil is so poor, but that it lacks the tilth of an owner's hands. ”

“ The first time that we saw the Shaker worship was on the occasion of Sister Julia's funeral, to which we were asked the day after her death. It was a hot afternoon at the end of July, and when we drove out of the woods, we were glad of the ash and maple trees that shade the village street in nearly its whole length. There were once three families at Shirley, but the South Family, so-called, has been absorbed by the Church Family, and its dwellings, barns, and shops are occupied by tenants and work people of the community. ”

“ Till this time the brothers and sisters had sat confronting each other on settees, which they now lifted and set out of the way against the wall. A group formed in an ellipse in the middle, with two lines of marchers out side of them, headed by Elder Wetherbee. Some one struck into one of their stirring march tunes, and those in the ellipse began to rock back and forth on their feet, and to sway their bodies to the music, while the marchers with a sort of rising motion began their round, all beat ing time with a quick outward gesture of the arms and an upward gesture of the open palms. ”

“ In the afternoon we found the office-sisters in the basement of their dwelling, putting up the berries in boxes, which they did with Shaker scrupulosity as to ripeness and justness of measure. The Shakers are very diligent people, and yet seem always to have any desired leisure, as one may notice in large, old-fashioned families where people do their own work. The industries at Shirley are broom-making (at which the minister, Elder John Whiteley, [1] and several of the brothers work) , raising blackberries, drying sweet corn, and making apple-sauce and jellies. ”

“ The farmer who can till his own fields and take care of his own stock can live by farming, but no other can. One might not regret this, for it tends to encourage the subdivision of land, but the farm which one man's labor can till is too small to support a family ”

“ He is the author of a system of musical notation which the Shakers used exclusively until very lately, and which many of them still prefer. At his great age he still works every day at basket-making, in which he is very skilful and conscientious. But it is superfluous to say this; Shaker work is always the best of its kind. He is rarely sick, and he takes part in all the details of the worship, as he did when he came, sixty years ago. ”

“ At the head of each family there is an elder and an eldress, to whom all complaints are first addressed, and by whom difficulties are settled. I believe there is also a species of confessional, in which those who desire can confide their repentance and good intentions to the elders. ”

“ Acknowledging a measure of inspiration in all religions, they also recognize a kindred attraction to the angelic life in the celibate orders of every faith: the Roman vestals, the Peruvian virgins of the sun, and the Buddhist bonzes, as well as the monks and nuns of the Catholic Church. They complain that they have not been understood by such alien writers as have treated of them, and have represented them as chiefly useful in furnishing homes for helpless and destitute people of all ages and sexes. ”

“ More than once there have been secessions of young people, which are nearly always stealthy, not because there could be any constraint, but because they dreaded to face the disappointed hopes of their elders. ”

“ The proportion of those reared in Shakerism whom the Shakers expect to keep is small; they count quite as much for their increase upon accessions of mature men and women from outside, whom the Shaker life and doctrine persuade. ”

“ They are all spiritualists, recognizing a succession of inspirations from the earliest times down to our own, when they claim to have been the first spiritual mediums. Five or six years before the spirits who have since animated so many table-legs, planchettes, phantom shapes, and what not began to knock at Rochester, the Shaker families in New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and elsewhere were in full communion with the other world, and they were warned of the impending invasion of the world's parlor and dining-room sets. ”

“ Mainly, their faith is their life; a life of charity, of labor, of celibacy, which they call the angelic life. Theologically, it can be most succinctly presented in their formula, Christ Jesus and Christ Ann, their belief being that the order of special prophecy was completed by the inspiration of Mother Ann Lee, the wife of the English blacksmith, Stanley. She is their second Christ; their divine mother, whom some of their hymns invoke; and for whom they cherish a filial love. The families of Shirley and Harvard, Massachusetts, were formed in her time, near the close of the last century ”

“ There are several reasons for the present decrease, besides that decrease of the whole rural population which I have mentioned. The impulse of the age is towards a scientific, a sensuous, an aesthetic life. Men no longer remain on the lonely farms, or in the little towns where they were born, brooding upon the ways of God to man; if they think of God, it is too often to despair of knowing him ”

“ Here three sisters and one brother are in charge, and here are chambers for visitors staying overnight. The Shakers do not keep a public-house, and are far from inviting custom, but their theory of Christianity forbids them to turn any one unhoused or unfed from their doors; the rich pay a moderate charge, and the poor nothing — as that large and flourishing order of fellow-citizens, the tramps, very well know. ”

“ It is within thirty-five miles of Boston, where we all know to our sorrow that provisions are dearer than anywhere in the country, — not to specify the whole planet, — and where consequently the best market is; yet the land grows up to woods. ”

“ But no wine has been made for many years, now; for the Shakers are very strictly abstemious. Yet if a brother's natural man insist upon a draught now and then, they consider all the circumstances, and do not forbid, while they deplore. ”

“ The new condition is always vulgar, and amidst the modern ferment we may look back upon the old stagnation and call it repose. Whatever it was, it was a time when men's minds turned fervidly from the hard work-days of this world to the Sabbaths of another ”

“ The first impression of all is cleanliness, with a suggestion of bareness which is not inconsistent, however, with comfort, and which comes chiefly from the aspect of the unpapered walls, the scrubbed floors hidden only by rugs and strips of carpeting, and the plain, flat finish of the wood-work. ”

“ They feel by no means honored, however, by all the results. But they believe that the intercourse between the worlds can be rescued from the evil influences which have perverted it, and they have signs, they say, of an early renewal of the manifestations among themselves. In some ways these have in fact never ceased. Many of the Shaker hymns, words and music, are directly inspirational, coming to this brother or that sister without regard to his or her special genius ”

“ The women were in far the greater number, as they are in the world's assemblies in this quarter, and a good half were children or young girls who had not come to close question with themselves, and of whom it could not yet be finally affirmed that they were Shakeresses. ”

“ The colors we noticed at meeting were for the young mostly white, for the middle-aged and elderly the subdued tints of drab, bronze, and lead-color, which also prevailed with the men of all ages. Both sexes wear collars that cover the whole neck, and both eschew the vanity of neckties ”