In the evening the
sitting-room is filled with the hired laborers of the society, and with
the smoke of their pipes.
Such is Zoar. Its people would not attract attention any where; they
dress and look like common laborers; their leading trustee, Jacob
Ackermann, who has carried on the affairs of the society for thirty
years and more, might easily be taken for a German farm-hand. It is the
more wonderful to compare the people with what they have achieved. Their
leader and founder taught them self-sacrifice, a desire for heavenly
things, temperance, or moderation in all things, preference of others to
themselves, contentment--and these virtues, together with a prudence in
the management of their affairs which has kept them out of debt since
they paid for their land, and uprightness in their agents which has
protected them against defalcations, have wrought, with very humble
intelligence, and very narrow means at the beginning, the result one now
sees at Zoar.
THE SHAKERS.
I.
The Shakers have the oldest existing communistic societies on this
continent. They are also the most thoroughly organized, and in some
respects the most successful and flourishing.
Mount Lebanon, the parent society, and still the thriftiest, was
established in 1792, eighty-two years ago.
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