112 
fencing. The girls learn female employments; they were as little 
oppressed as the boys with labour and teaching; these happy and 
interesting children were much more employed in making their 
youth pass as pleasantly as possible. Madam Neef showed the 
school-house, in which she dwelt, and in which the places for 
sleeping were arranged for the boys. Each boy slept on a cot 
frame, upon a straw bed. 
We went next to Rapp’s distillery: it will be removed alto¬ 
gether. Mr. Owen has forbidden distilling also, as well as the use 
of ardent spirits. Notwithstanding this, the Irishmen here find 
opportunities of getting whiskey and fuddling themselves from 
the flat boats that stop here, &c. We saw also a dye-house 
and a mill set in motion by a steam-engine of ten horse-power. 
The engine was old and not in good order, Mr. Owen said how¬ 
ever, he hoped to introduce steam-mills here in time from Eng¬ 
land. From the mills we went to the vineyard, which was en¬ 
closed and kept in very good order. I spoke to an old French 
vine-dresser here. He assured me that Rapp’s people had not 
understood the art of making wine; that he would in time make 
more and much better wine, than had been done heretofore. 
The wine stocks are imported from the Cape of Good Hope, and 
the wine has an entirely singular and strange taste, which re¬ 
minds one of the common Spanish wines. 
We went again to the quondam church, or workshop for the 
boys, who are intended for joiners and shoemakers. These boys 
sleep upon the floor above the church in cribs, three in a row, 
and thus have their sleeping place and place of instruction close 
together. We also saw the shops of the shoemakers, tailors and 
saddlers, also the smiths, of which six were under one roof, and 
the pottery, in which were two rather large furnaces. A porcelain 
earth has been discovered on the banks of the Mississippi, in the 
state of Illinois, not far from St. Louis. Two experienced 
members of the society, went in that direction, to bring some 
of the earth to try experiments with, in burning. The greater 
part of the young girls, whom we chanced to meet at home, we 
found employed in plaiting straw hats. I became acquainted with 
a Madam F-, a native of St. Petersburg. She married an 
American merchant, settled there, and had the misfortune to lose 
her husband three days after marriage. She then joined her hus¬ 
band’s family at Philadelphia, and as she was somewhat eccen¬ 
tric and sentimental, quickly became enthusiastically attached to 
Mr. Owen’s system. She told me, however, in German, that she 
found herself egregiously deceived; that the highly vaunted 
equality was not altogether to her taste; that some of the society 
were too low, and the table was below all criticism. The good 
lady appeared to be about to run from one extreme to the other; 
