Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/179

Rh women, all attired alike, tripping, and see-sawing up and down, and swinging about with downcast eyes, and without any sign of joy or natural life, appeared to me in a high degree unnatural. They had gentle but unmeaning countenances; I did not see one among them which was beautiful. The men looked better and more natural, both body and soul, and danced with more life, although the effect was often ludicrous. Again all was still in the assembly, and all resumed their seats on the benches. And now a Shaker brother of about forty stood up; he was a man with a narrow forehead, and deep-set, dark, glimmering eyes, whose whole exterior indicated the dominance of one idea, fanatically held. He placed himself before the spectators, and addressed them somewhat in this style—

“You behold us here assembled in a room which we have built by our own labour, in which we may worship God according to the law of our own conscience. If you are come here to see us, and you desire to feel esteem for our community and our mode of worship, and to behave in accordance with it, then you are welcome; if not, then you are not welcome here. But I hope the former. And let us now talk one with another, and let us see what it is which lies between you and us, what it is which separates us. Let us understand one another.”

He then proceeded to describe the Shaker community in opposition to the worldly community; the former as renouncing the world and living only for heaven, the latter as living merely for selfish enjoyment and earthly advantage. We had, every one of us, a very severely condemnatory sermon from Brother Evans (for such was the name of the Shaker brother), on account of our sins and our frailties, interrupted merely by such admonitions as, “Come, let us consider the matter together! Answer me!” and so on. It would have been extremely easy to have answered the good brother and to have