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We had attended many services in England at noted churches and cathedrals, but for genuine Christianity, true brotherly love and real inspiration, I think the half hour talk of the old Quaker was worth them all. We agreed that it was one of our most fortunate experiences.
Jean Aydelot followed them to Pennsylvania and married Mercy Pennington, who was promptly disowned by the Quaker Church for this marriage to one outside its membership. In spite of all this heresy, however, the Aydelots became one of the leading families in the development of the colonies.
I doubt if there is a single pilgrim of all that host but can show a hundred fair pages of journal concerning the first twenty days' voyaging in the Quaker City, and I am morally certain that not ten of the party can show twenty pages of journal for the succeeding twenty thousand miles of voyaging!
Neither in the garments of those who have laid off the Quaker garb, nor in the decorations of the houses is there a lively sense of the beauty of color. None of the women of Quaker extraction has a sense of color in dress; nor can any of them match or harmonize colors. I except, of course, those whose clothing is directly under the control of the city tailor or milliner.
Several ladies and gentlemen entered and took their seats on benches at either side of the table, in silence. Enter Mrs. Fry in a drab-coloured silk cloak, and plain borderless Quaker cap; a most benevolent countenance, Guido-Madonna face, calm, benign. "I must make an inquiry, Is Maria Edgeworth here? and where?" I went forward; she bade us come and sit beside her.
Now in that night of horror I was assailed by the thought that I had been an erring Christian and a cruel parent; yea, even my daughter with her pale dying features seemed to stand by me and whisper, 'Father, you are deceived; go home and shelter your gray head. O Thou to whom I have looked in my furthest wanderings," continued the Quaker, raising his agitated eyes to heaven, "inflict not upon the bloodiest of our persecutors the unmitigated agony of my soul when I believed that all I had done and suffered for thee was at the instigation of a mocking fiend!
Gone all gone, with only pity to cover him, unloved, unloving, unbemoaned, save by the Quaker girl whose true spirit he had hurt, save by the wife whom he had cruelly wronged and tortured; and pity was the thing that moved them both, unfathomable and almost maternal, in that sense of motherhood which, in spite of love or passion, is behind both, behind all, in every true woman's life.
After this we travelled on as rapidly as possible, in order to reach our place of destination before dark. Mr. Dogherty, a tall, bolt-upright man, half Quaker, half Methodist, did his best to entertain me, by giving me a thorough schedule of his religious opinions, with the reasons from Scripture upon which they were based.
But she was not troubled, for she saw at a glance that the brook to whose banks she was coming was the one flowing through the farm of the Quaker. "Perhaps I shall see him again," she said to herself, and the hope made her tumultuously happy. She had lost all consciousness of the flight of time, and now noticed with surprise that it was evening.
I venerate the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. I am all over sophisticated with humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy.
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