Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/186

Rh with a spiritual kiss, because, I presume, that you will not allow any other.”

“Oh, we are not so particular as that,” said a young girl, who smiling and bending forward her pretty head, kissed me, and with that came forward the rest, and we had a hearty kissing all round, Rebecca and I and the Shaker sisters, and as they laughed at this, I said to them:

“I fancied that you could not laugh.” And that made them all laugh again, and one of the elder women said, “Oh, I would not, for a great deal, be without my good laugh!”

They were regularly charming and delightful, a thousand times more so than some worldly and thoughtless ladies at the hotel at Lebanon Wells, who set themselves very high above “the poor Shakers.”

Their society left a very good impression upon me; and I have heard from persons who have had intercourse with the Shakers for many years, a great deal of good respecting them, in particular of their mutual life of Christian love, as well as of their kindness to the poor; their tender care of such children as are entrusted to them, sometimes those of poor people who do not belong to their society, sometimes of the families of members, but who live without acknowledging more than the spiritual connection with the society. The care which is taken also of the old and the sick of the community is said to be excellent. I heard the same from my little lady-doctor in Boston, Miss H., who is the physician of two or three Shaker establishments. She also told me of many an unhappy human life in the world which has found a peaceful asylum among the Shakers, of miserably married people, of lonely women, of men who have been severely tried by affliction, who have here found a haven from the tempests of the day, who have found friends, protection, the comforts of life, and the peace of life which they never could have found in the world. These