They pay their full share of public taxes and assessments and give largely in charity.
Their buildings are well built and well kept, their farms and lands worked to the best advantage; in short, they are industrious and thrifty.
Communism is one of those dreams that come so often to the best of mankind and, lingering on through the waking hours, influence conduct.

The sharp distinctions and inequalities of life seem so harsh and unjust; the wide intervals which separate those who have from those who have not seem so unfair, that in all ages and in all countries men have tried to devise schemes for social equality,--equality of power, opportunity, and achievement.
Communism of some sort is one solution urged,--communism in property, communism in effort, communism in results, everything in common.
In 1840 Emerson wrote to Carlyle, "We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform.

Not a reading man but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket.

I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to live cleanly.

George Ripley is talking up a colony of agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the field and book.