moment after the reader had finished, his
face shining with an inward light and glowing with a sublime purpose,
all believed that he was about to summon Pepeeta to their marriage.

What was the astonishment, then, when in rapt words he began:

"God has spoken to us, my friends. We have heard his voice. It is too
soon for me to enjoy this bliss! Yes, I will wait! I will dedicate this
year to meditation and prayer. Pepeeta, wilt thou join me in this
resolution? If thou wilt, let the betrothal of this night be one of soul
to soul and both our souls to God! Give me thine hand."

Still under the spell of strange spiritual emotions to which her
sensitive spirit vibrated like the strings of an AEolian harp, Pepeeta
rose, and placing her hands in those of her lover, looked up into his
face with a touching confidence, an almost adoring love. It was more
like the bridal of two pure spirits than the betrothal of a man and
woman!

Not one of those who saw it has ever forgotten that strange scene; it is
a tradition in that community until this day. They felt, and well they
might, those strange people who had dedicated themselves and their
children to the divine life, that in this scene their little community
had attained the zenith of its spiritual history.

No wonder that from an English statesman this eulogy was once wrung: "By
God, sir, we cannot afford to persecute the Quakers! Their religion may
be wrong, but the people who cling to an idea are the very people we
want. If we must persecute--let us persecute the complacent!"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

FASTING IN THE WILDERNESS

"So great is the good I look for, that every hardship delights me."

--St. Francis.

The period of our country's history in which these characters were
formed was one of tremendous moral earnestness. In that struggle in
which man pitted himself against primeval forest and aboriginal
inhabitant, the strongest types of manhood and womanhood were evolved,
and those who conceived the idea of living a righteous life set
themselves to its realization with the same energy with which they
addressed themselves to the conquest of nature itself. To multitudes of
them, this present world took a place that in the fullest sense of the
word was secondary to that other world in which they lived by
anticipation.

David Corson was only one of many who, to a degree which in these less
earnest or at least more materialistic times appears incredible, had