eisure and freedom to engage in, so that her conversation is in no wise
beneath her station. Nor doth she, like some of her people, especially
the more simple and unlearned, affect a painful and melancholy look and
a canting tone of discourse, but lacketh not for cheerfulness and a
certain natural ease and grace of demeanor; and the warmth and goodness
of her heart doth at times break the usual quiet of her countenance,
like to sunshine and wind on a still water, and she hath the sweetest
smile I ever saw. I have often thought, since I have been with her,
that if Uncle Rawson could see and hear her as I do for a single day,
he would confess that my brother might have done worse than to take a
Quaker to wife.

BOSTON, May 28, 1679.

Through God's mercy, I got here safe and well, saving great weariness,
and grief at parting with my brother and his wife. The first day we
went as far as a place they call Rehoboth, where we tarried over night,
finding but small comfort therein; for the house was so filled, that
Leonard and a friend who came with us were fain to lie all night in the
barn, on the mow before their horses; and, for mine own part, I had to
choose between lying in the large room, where the man of the house and
his wife and two sons, grown men, did lodge, or to climb into the dark
loft, where was barely space for a bed,--which last I did make choice
of, although the woman thought it strange, and marvelled not a little at
my unwillingness to sleep in the same room with her husband and boys,
as she called them. In the evening, hearing loud voices in a house near
by, we inquired what it meant, and were told that some people from
Providence were holding a meeting there, the owner of the house being
accounted a Quaker. Whereupon, I went thither with Leonard, and found
nigh upon a score of people gathered, and a man with loose hair and
beard speaking to them. My brother whispered to me that he was no
Friend, but a noted ranter, a noisy, unsettled man. He screamed
exceeding loud, and stamped with his feet, and foamed at the mouth, like
one possessed with an evil spirit, crying against all order in State or
Church, and declaring that the Lord had a controversy with Priests and
Magistrates, the prophets who prophesy falsely, and the priests who bear
rule by their means, and the people who love to have it so. He spake of
the Quakers as a tender and hopeful people in their beginning, and while
the arm of the wick