Daily Intelligencer

[From the St. Louis Republican.

Down in Benton county Arkansas, on the southwest border of our State, there is a place called Harmony Springs, where a community of men and women was some time since established for the avowed promotion of "moral, social, intellectual, and spiritual happiness." We do not know how much, if any this, society differs in "doctrine" from that of the Icarians, the Indiana Harmonists, the Oneida Perfectionists, the New York Commonwealth and similar institutions; but, from a perusal of several successive numbers of a paper published by it, called the Theocrat, we infer that some of its principal tenets are the following: Community of property, a vegetarian diet, "reform" in the marriage relations, and a general seeking after the true, with a corresponding detestation of the artificial. The community is constituted of those ardent spirits who yearn for a "higher life" and a more "exalted sphere" than they are able to perceive in the usual organization of society—of people who rail at time honored custom, as relics of barbarism, and whose gushing souls would clutch, at one desperate reach, the mystic joys of absolute perfection. Dr. J. E. Spencer was one of the editors of the Theocrat; and he and his wife stood at the head of the Harmonial Society, managing its affairs and exercising a general superintendence over its concerns.

It appears from a long article in the same journal that some members of the society, not devoid of the human trait of curiosity, became skeptical of the Doctor's antecedents, and accordingly began a private investigation. Among other things, it was ascertained by a letter from Wheeling, Va., that the sainted Martha was not the Doctor's wife, but that he had deserted his legal spouse and taken up with the Martha aforesaid, whom their "spiritual guides" had joined together. It was also learned that the couple were compelled to run away from Rochester, and other places in New York, to avoid being mobbed. These things, together with the affair leaking out, the Doctor and his paramour clandestinely packed up the best and most valuable goods belonging to the community, consisting of carpeting, bedding, unmade clothing, some fifty pair of boots and shoes, silver ware, cutlery, &c.; too numerous to mention, together with every dollar belonging to the treasury of the society, and the titles of all their real estate, and suddenly left, under pretence of being absent but a few days, or until there should be a greater degree of "harmony" in the family. But the runaways were pursued on horseback and taken back to their harmonial home, where, they were detained until the Doctor had conveyed the property over to the society in part remuneration for large sums of money of which he could give no satisfactory account, when the couple were sent upon their way rejoicing.

The Doctor was postmaster at Harmony Springs, and among the developments alluded to was the discovery that he had been in the habit of opening letters, reading their contents, and resealing them with paste, being thus able to foretell the arrival of letters by mail, and what they would contain. Wonderful mystery of spiritual power!

We draw a moral from these disclosures. They show that however beautiful in theory the Harmonial Philosophy may be as to community of property, the doctrine will not work well until avarice is banished from the human family, and until the necessity no longer exists for the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal." They show that nefarious practices are still carried on under the guise of the most noble reforms; that dissatisfaction with the instituted order of things, is not by any means proof of an exalted purity of soul, and that morbid imagination is not "higher life."