ferings of my beloved parents, that the
consideration of the general scarcity prevailing in the country led me
to think how wrong it was for me to wear powder on my head, the ground
of which I knew to be pride.' He gave up powder from this time. It
would not be much of a sacrifice nowadays, but it was a very real one
then, when powder was supposed to be the distinguishing mark of a
gentleman. The two brothers were now obliged to learn to support
themselves. All their estates in France had been seized. 'Our means
began to be low, and yet our feelings for the sufferings in which our
beloved parents might be involved, caused us to forget ourselves,
strangers in a strange country, and to forward them a few hundred
dollars we had yet left.'

It was no easy matter to find employment. The brothers went on to New
York, and there at last the Friends were kind: Friends in deed and not
in name only. They found a situation for Joseph in New York itself,
and arranged for Stephen to go to Philadelphia, where he was more
likely to find work.

And at Philadelphia the Friends were, if possible, even kinder to him
than the Friends at New York. They were spiritual fathers and mothers
to him, he says, and seemed to know exactly what he was feeling. 'They
had but little to say in words, but I often felt that my spirit was
refreshed and strengthened in their company.' At Philadelphia, he had
many offers of tempting employment, but he decided to continue as a
teacher of languages in a school. He gave his whole mind to his school
work while he was at it, and out of school hours wandered about
entirely care free. But although he was a teacher of languages and
although the English of his Journals is scrupulously careful, it has
often a slight foreign stiffness and formality. He was often afraid in
his early years of making mistakes and not speaking quite correctly.
There is a story that long afterwards, when he was in England and was
taking his leave of some schoolgirls, he wished to say to them that
he hoped they might be preserved safely. But in the agitation of his
departure he chose the wrong words. His parting injunction, therefore,
never faded from the girls' memory: 'My dear young Friends, may the
Lord _pickle_ you, His dear little _muttons_.'

If, even as an old man, Stephen was liable to fall into such pitfalls
as this, it is easy to understand that in his earlier years the fear
of making mistakes must have been a real terror to him,