progressed on this building
from time to time since then, and at this writing it is so near
completion as to give promise of being one of the most perfect
architectural jobs ever done by the hand of man.

In two years Philadelphia had sprung from a wilderness, where the rank
thistle nodded in the wind, to a town of over two thousand people,
exclusive of Indians not taxed. In three years it had gained more than
New York had in fifty years. This was due to the fact that the people
who came to Philadelphia had nothing to fear but the Indians, while
settlers in New York had not only the Indians to defend themselves
against, but the police also.

Penn and his followers established the great law that no one who
believed in Almighty God should be molested in his religious belief.
Even the Indians liked Penn, and when the nights were cold they would
come and crawl into his bed and sleep with him all night and not kill
him at all. The Great Chief of the Tribes, even, did not feel above
this, and the two used frequently to lie and talk for hours, Penn doing
the talking and the chief doing the lying.

It is said that, with all the Indian massacres and long wars between the
red men and the white, no drop of Quaker blood was ever shed. I quote
this from an historian who is much older than I, and with whom I do not
wish to have any controversy.

After Penn's death his heirs ran the Colony up to 1779, when they
disposed of it for five hundred thousand dollars or thereabouts, and the
State became the proprietor.

[Illustration: PENN AND THE BIG CHIEF.]

The seventeenth century must have been a very disagreeable period for
people who professed religion, for America from Newfoundland to Florida
was dotted with little settlements almost entirely made up of people who
had escaped from England to secure religious freedom at the risk of
their lives.

In 1634 the first settlement was made by young Lord Baltimore, whose
people, the Catholics, were fleeing from England to obtain freedom to
worship God as they believed to be right. Thus the Catholics were added
to the list of religious refugees,--viz., the Huguenots, the Puritans,
the Walloons, the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the Whigs, and the Menthol
Healers.

Terra Mariae, or Maryland, was granted to Lord Baltimore, as the
successor of his father, who had begun before his death the movement for
settling his people in America. The charter gave to all freemen a voice
in making the l