e same. No distinction is made as to the powers of usefulness
between the men and the women of this society. There are few offices
held by men, but there is a corresponding one for those of the other
sex.[41]

[Footnote 41: The principal exceptions are, that they are not
correspondents, arbitrators, legislators, or on committees of appeal.]

The execution of these and other, public offices, by which the Quaker
women have an important station allotted them in society, cannot but
have an important influence on their minds. It gives them, in fact, a
new cast of character. It imparts to them, in the first place, a
considerable knowledge of human nature. It produces in them thought, and
foresight, and judgment. It creates in them a care and concern for the
distressed. It elevates their ideas. It raises in them a sense of their
own dignity and importance as human beings, which sets them above every
thing that is little and trifling, and above all idle parade and shew.
Fond as they are of the animal creation, you do not see them lavishing
their caresses on lap-dogs, to the contempt of the poor and miserable of
their own species. You never see them driving from shop to shop to make
up a morning's amusement, by examining and throwing out of order the
various articles of tradesmen, giving them great trouble, and buying
nothing in return. You never find them calling upon those whom they know
to be absent from their homes, thus making their mimic visits, and
leaving their useless cards. Nothing, in short, so ridiculous or
degrading, is known among them. Their pursuits are rational, useful, and
dignified. And they may be said in general to exhibit a model for the
employment of time, worthy of the character they profess.

MISCELLANEOUS PARTICULARS
RELATIVE TO THE
QUAKERS

_Quakers a happy people--Subordinate causes of this happiness--namely,
their comfortable situation--their attachment to domestic life--their
almost constant employment--this happiness not broken like that of
others, by an interruption of the routine of constituted pleasures--or
by anger and other passions or by particular enquiries and notions about
religion._

If a person were to judge of the Quakers by the general gravity of
their countenances, and were to take into consideration, at the same
time, the circumstance, that they never partook of the amusements of the
world, in which he placed a part of his own pleasures, he would be
induced to co