his it was they did apply--to the status of women, to the
question of slavery, to the civic relations of men. This it was that
made Fox and Penn refuse to doff their hats before judge, or titled
lord, or the king himself.

The character of the common mind of the community has been much
influenced by the fact that the Quakers made no use of color, form and
music either in worship or in private life; that they also idealized the
absence of these. They made it a matter of noble devotion. In nothing do
local traditions abound more than in stories of the stern repression of
the aesthetic instincts. One ancient Quakeress, coming to the well-set
table at a wedding, in the old days, beheld there a bunch of flowers of
gay colors, and would not sit down until they were removed. Nor could
the feast go on until the change was effected. So great was the power of
authority, working in the grooves of "making believe," that those who
might have tolerated the bouquet in silence, as well as those who had
sensations of pleasure in it, supported her opposition.

I have spoken elsewhere of the effect of this century-long repression
and ignoring of the aesthetic movements of the human spirit, in banking
the fires of literary culture in this population. The present
generation, all inheriting the examples of ancestors ruled in such
unflinching rigor, has in none of its social grouping any true sense of
color or of the beauty of color. Neither in the garments of those who
have laid off the Quaker garb, nor in the decorations of the houses is
there a lively sense of the beauty of color. None of the women of Quaker
extraction has a sense of color in dress; nor can any of them match or
harmonize colors. I except, of course, those whose clothing is directly
under the control of the city tailor or milliner. The general effect of
costume and of the decorations of a room, in the population who get
their living on the Hill, is that of gray tones, and drab effects; not
mere severity is the effect, but poverty and want of color.

In forms of beauty they know and feel little more. I do not refer to the
lack of appreciation of the elevations and slopes of this Hill itself--a
constant delight to the artistic eye. Farmers and laborers might fail to
appreciate a scene known to them since childhood. But there is in the
Quaker breeding, which gives on certain sides of character so true and
fine a culture a conspicuous lack in this one particular.

As to musi