eet in. Many of all sorts come to us and many of all sorts are
convinced, yea, hundreds do believe....'

Again: 'We get Friends together on the First Days to meet together out
of the rude multitude; and we two go to the great meeting place which
we have, which will hold a thousand people, which is always nearly
filled, there to thresh among the world; and we stay till twelve or
one o'clock and then pass away, the one to the one place and the other
to another place where Friends are met in private; and stay till four
or five o'clock.'

Only a month later yet another 'great place' had to be taken for a
'threshing-floor,' or hall where public meetings could be held. To
these meetings anyone might come and listen to the preachers' message,
which 'threshed them like grain, and sifted the wheat from the "light
chaffy minds" among the hearers.'

How 'chaffy' and frivolous this gay world of London appeared to these
first Publishers, consumed with the burning eagerness of their
mission, the following description shows. It occurs in a letter from
George Fox himself when he, too, came to the metropolis, a few months
later.

'What a world this is,' he writes ... 'altogether carried with
fooleries and vanities both men and women ... putting on gold, gay
apparel, plaiting the hair, men and women they are powdering it,
making their backs as if they were bags of meal, and they look so
strange that they cannot look at one another. Pride hath puffed up
every one, they are out of the fear of God, men and women, young and
old, one puffs up another, they are not in the fashion of the world
else, they are not in esteem else, they shall not be respected else,
if they have not gold and silver upon their backs, or his hair be not
powdered. If he have a company of ribbons hung about his waist, red or
white, or black or yellow, and about his knees, and gets a Company in
his hat, and powders his hair, then he is a brave man, then he is
accepted, then he is no Quaker.... Likewise the women having their
gold, their spots on their faces, noses, cheeks, foreheads, having
their rings on their fingers, wearing gold, having their cuffs doubled
under and about like a butcher with white sleeves' (how pretty they
must have been!), 'having their ribbons tied about their hands, and
three or four gold laces about their clothes, "this is no Quaker," say
they.... Now are not all these that have got these ribbons hung about
their arms, backs, waists, knees,