United States or Micronesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
More zealous brethren called the Gurneys "worldly," and shook their heads over their degenerate conduct; but, all unseen, Mrs. Gurney was training up her family in ways of usefulness and true wisdom; while "the fear of the Lord," as the great principle of life and action, was constantly set before them.
It became more palpable after this; his voice, when he did speak, was fretful, irritable, his lips compressed; he stopped at a village-well to drink, as though his mouth were parched. "How old is that house, the Gurneys?" he asked, affecting carelessness, to baffle the curious inspection of McKinstry. "The Fort?
She was sure that the high sense of honor that prevailed among the Gurneys would be sufficient to make any of them fulfil a promise once made, even at a great sacrifice to themselves. But she would not. No! not if they despised her for it!
At Earlham, the home of the Gurneys, we learn how much may be done by a family, and how widespread its influence for good or evil may become. Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton certainly stands foremost, not alone amongst the East Anglians, but the philanthropists of later years. At the age of sixteen young Buxton went to Earlham as a guest.
To pay what was necessary the 'Gurneys' had to sell their estates, and their visible ruin destroyed the credit of the concern.
This intercourse with the Gurneys, he used afterwards to say, gave the colouring to his life. They encouraged his efforts at self- culture; and when he went to the University of Dublin and gained high honours there, the animating passion in his mind, he said, "was to carry back to them the prizes which they prompted and enabled me to win."
It was from the Gurneys he "caught the infection" of self-improvement. Contact with the good never fails to impart good, and we carry away with us some of the blessing, as travellers' garments retain the odour of the flowers and shrubs through which they have passed.
The Gurneys were nominally Friends, but they had gradually slipped away from the directness of speech, the plainness of dress, and the simplicity of the Quakers. They were getting rich on government contracts and who wants to be ridiculous anyway? So, with consternation, the father and mother heard the avowal of Elizabeth to adopt the extreme customs of the Friends. They sought to dissuade her.
Lancy claimed one hour in the evening for himself; and as the rooms in the Sherwood household were almost dismantled, the greater part of the time was spent over the piano in the Gurneys' parlor, and their heart's good-bye was spoken through the one piece of music which they called their own.
"The salon of Susannah Taylor, the mother of Sarah Austin, the wife of John Taylor, hymn writer and deacon of the seminal chapel, the once noted Octagon, in Norwich, included in its zenith Sir James Mackintosh, Mrs. Barbauld, Crabb Robinson, the solemn Dr. John Alderson, Amelia Opie, Henry Reeve of Edinburgh fame, Basil Montagu, the Sewards, the Quaker Gurneys of Earlham, and Dr.
Word Of The Day