ious country lad, with
a Puritan conscience.

Moreover, at this moment, in the face of any possible temptation,
William's sober tastes and devout resolutions were strengthened by
certain appealing sermons. Here it was at Oxford, the nursery of
enthusiasms and holy causes, that he received the impulse which
determined all his after life. He spent but a scant two years in
college; and the work of the lecture rooms must have suffered seriously
during that time from the contention and confusion of the changes then
in progress; so that academically the college could not have greatly
profited him. The profit came in the influence of Thomas Loe. Loe was a
Quaker.

The origin of the name "Quaker" is uncertain. It is derived by some
from the fact that the early preachers of the sect trembled as they
spoke; others deduce it from the trembling which their speech compelled
in those who heard it. By either derivation, it indicates the earnest
spirit of that strange people who, in the seventeenth century, were
annoying and displeasing all their neighbors.

George Fox, the first Quaker, was a cobbler; and the first Quaker dress
was the leather coat and breeches which he made for himself with his own
tools. Thereafter he was independent both of fashions and of tailors.
Cobbler though he was, and so slenderly educated that he did not express
himself grammatically, Fox was nevertheless a prophet, according to the
order of Amos, the herdman of Tekoa. He looked out into the England of
his day with the keenest eyes of any man of the times, and remarked upon
what he saw with the most honest and candid speech. A man of the plain
people, like most of the prophets and apostles, the offenses which
chiefly attracted his attention were such as the plain people naturally
see.

Out of the windows of his cobbler's shop, Fox beheld with righteous
indignation the extravagant and insincere courtesies of the gentlefolk,
and heard their exaggerated phrases of compliment. In protest against
the unmeaning courtesies, he wore his hat in the presence of no matter
whom, taking it off only in time of prayer. In protest against the
unmeaning compliments, he addressed no man by any artificial title,
calling all his neighbors, without distinction of persons, by their
Christian names; and for the plural pronoun "you," the plural of dignity
and flattery, he substituted "thee" and "thou."

The same literalness appeared in his selection of "Swear not at all" as