Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/42

Rh in society, the Quaker community has practically shown. Men and women have there the same privileges and exercise them alike. But in all this they have remained true to their nature; she turns rather into the home, he more outward to the community. The women have remained equally feminine, but have become more marked in character. The different characteristics of the two have, in that which was the best, remained unchanged, but have been improved, elevated where they were worst. That “holy experiment” proves itself to have been in this respect wholly successful, and ought to have led to a yet more grand experiment.

The present younger generation of Quakers unites itself more to the world by poetry and music, and begins to light up the old grey and drab attire by a still more cheerful hue. The change is prepared in the mind. The world has become purified through the purity of the Quakers, and its innocent joy and beauty now begin to find their way to them. A young girl, of Quaker family, of my acquaintance here, wore pale pink ribbon, and had her bonnet made in a prettier form than that in use among the Quakers, and when reproached by her mother for seeking to please man rather than God, she replied—

“Oh, my mother! He made the flowers and the rainbow!”

The exclusiveness of Quakerism is at an end. And yet it is so peculiar and so beautiful in its simple, gentle, outward forms, that I am afraid for it, and would not lose it for a great deal. I am fond of its “thee and thou;” its silent meetings; its dress, in particular the woman's dress, with its chaste, dew-like purity and delicacy. And under this attire there dwells still many a noble soul, in the brightness of that inner light, illumined by the sun of Christian revelation, deriving thence, for themselves and others, oracles which the distracted eye and ear of the world cannot perceive. And poets such as ,