Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1868-06-20
FREE LOVEISM,
II Makes Ugly Women and Children
The Fanatic COIOney at Oneida. New
York

| - MAKES Ugly women and Children
The Fanatic COIOney at Oneida, New
York.
A correspondent Of the Watsonville, Cal.
Rajaroaian, recently visited the notorious
| Oneida, n. Y, community, where the fami-
ly relation is superseded and complex
marriage" in other words, kind Of free
love prevails. The writer says:
IL the social life Mr.. Noyes has institu-
ted is any intimation of the millennium,
alas for all artists and poets, and worship
pers Of the beautiful, when the millennium
shall be full upon usl Imagine eighty or a
hundred women, most of them of the
drudge class, few rising TO the external
intellectual, none TO the spiritual-every
one, young and old, with the hair shingled
(Or cut short at the neck, every one with
theugliest bIoomer dresses, viz the straight
mans pants, below dingy colored calico
dress 10 match, with collars and breast
pias 80 similar that they must have
been bought by the gross, with faces out
OF which every vestige of the indi-
viduality had been religiously eradieated,
and You see the feminine side of the
millennium. This, with plenty to eat and
driak, cleanliness, and shelter, comprises
the first step toward the millennium. Moth
ing could be imagined more dreary. The
eye longs for color, for graceful cHrves, for
variety of every kind, the heart for win
some ways, and hearty mirth, as we'll as
gravity. Ia the twenty-four hours was
heard not the shadow of a laugh. People
walked in TO their meals in a staid
mechanical way, and walked out again
No young girl nodded or smiled at an-
other, or hurried in girlish earnestness, to /
relate some little circumstance or question
Of some girlish interest as they would have
done 10 their own fathers house. / was
shown the children, and here were still
more vacant faces, and the same monoton-
ons dress. 1t was a sad sight indeed. The
children are held to belong to the COM
munity, and no more 10 their mothers than
10 any other woman in it. With 30 little
brightness in their faces, did not see how
any woman could be particularly moved
TO claim one as specially her own. There
were perhaps thirty under sixteen years of
age, only fifteen of them born to members
of the community.
1t was a singular proof of how the ig-
norant can be managed by earnest but ia
natical leaders, to see the two hundred, APP
parently in a state Of utter apathy, file into
the large meeting hall the evening l was
there. They carried in their hands me-
dium sized lamps, which they placed on
the tables assigned them, and sitting down,
the women took each out of her pocket a
gray wooden sock, and proceeded to knit
monOtonously, and the men we're seated
back from the lamps. No one nodded or
smiled, or looked around with interest on
the gathering throng, At once young
man arose, and moving to the end of the
hall, read from a daily paper the tele-
graphic news-neWs of Garabaldi and mat
ters of equal importance. They never
moved a muscle or took the least notice.
No eye lifted at news of the hero's success,
or became moist from sadder cause. Then
a brother-"Homer" it was, believe
was up for criticism. A very good looking
young man rose and declared in mea-
sured phrase that che felt to love Homer,
and he thought yes, he believed
Homer felt more love toward the brothers
and sisters himself His great fault had |
been his set 1gdys. He would work his |
own way, and could not be made to merge
his ways in the ways Of others. He did |
not think, however, that he was coming |
more into harmony with the Kingdom of |
God. Homer might improve his voice,
though. He would say that all wouId be
happier if he did. His voice was disagree
abe. 1t might be improved. He might
take sohse vocal exercises" etc. A very
Wo,Ssn, whose voice / barely |
endured in a scriptGSal discussion in the
afternoon. here chimed ii that "she, too,
thought Homer might take sonie vocal ex-
ercises, and improve his voice" After
this criticism, which occupied something
over half an hour, was finished, a spiritless
hymn was sung-the women took up their
lamps, and without one backward good
night glance to man or woman, marched
listlessly out to their rooms AT this meet
ing, | noticed several quite good looking !,
men, and these were those who exercised
all the power there was in the community |
| never before felt 80 certain that the de-
sire to obtain for ones self property was
God-giYen and legitimate desire. These
people had silenced this part Of their ma
ture, and their faces told it. 3