Alcott Readathon 2018: Transcendental Wild Oats

TIMON LION (AKA CHARLES LANE): So we're going to make an Utopia, and we will all be vegans.
ABEL LAMB (AKA BRONSON ALCOTT): And no molasses or cotton because of slavery, and no using animals at all.
TIMON: We shall name it Fruitlands.
NARRATOR: The property contained ten apple trees.
HOPE LAMB (AKA ABIGAIL ALCOTT): Okay, I can put up with the rest of this insanity, but my daughters aren't going barefoot.

TIMON: Each will do the work they are best fit for. I'm still deciding what I'm fit for.
HOPE: May I suggest washing laundry by hand?

Several other characters join the community: a guy who swears constantly, a guy who runs around when he's happy and screams when he's angry, and, to the girls' delight, a fiddler. Forest Absolom (I don't know the real name) assists Hope with baking bread. Jane Gage, a poet, moves in but is kicked out for eating fish. The men wear linen dresses and enjoy the “mild martyrdom” of mockery they get when they go abroad. Timon and Abel neglect the grain crop, so Hope, her three eldest daughters, and Timon's son reap it, “harnessed to clothes-baskets and Russia-linen sheets.” The harvest is so forlorn that Timon leaves for the Shakers.

ABEL: I'm a failure.
HOPE: Yes, but I still love you.
ABEL: I'm penniless
HOPE: No, I sold some books things, and Lovejoy will let us rent his spare room. And I can sew.
ABEL: Poor Fruitlands.
HOPE: I always called it Apple Slump.

(Seriously, read it, it's short and snarky!)

Later this month: Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom.