July 26, 2025 • 17 mins
In this intriguing volume, Elbert Hubbard takes us on an intimate tour through the homes of remarkable women who left their mark on history. Exploring the residences of authors, poets, social reformers, and other esteemed figures, Hubbard delves into how their environments could have shaped their lives and work. This book is a unique blend of biography and insightful commentary on the subjects life and creative output. Featured women include Elizabeth B. Browning, Madame Guyon, Harriet Martineau, Charlotte Bronte, Christina Rossetti, Rosa Bonheur, Madame De Stael, Elizabeth Fry, Mary Lamb, Jane Austen, Empress Josephine and Mary W. Shelley. The volume also features a poignant introduction by Hubbards son, Elbert Hubbard II, penned shortly after his fathers passing. This is Volume 2 in a series of 14 enlightening books.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Section fifteen of Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Wimen.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot or recording by Michel Eaton. Little Journeys
to the Homes of Famous Women by Albert Hubbard, Section
(00:22):
fifteen Elizabeth Frye, Part one. When thee bills are prison
THEE had better build with the thought ever in thy mind,
that THEE and thy children may occupy the cells. Report
on Paris Prisons addressed to the King of France. The Mennonite, Dunkard, Shaker,
(00:42):
nade A, Communist, Mormon, and Quaker are all one people,
varying only to environment. They are all come outers. They
turn to plain clothes, hard work, religious thought, eschewing the
pomps and vanities of the world, all for the same reasons.
Scratch any one of them and you will find the
true type. The Monk of the Middle Ages was the
(01:04):
same man, his peculiarity being an extreme asceticism that caused
him to count sex a mistake on the part of God.
And this same question has been a stumbling block for
Ages to the type we now have under the glass.
A man who gives the question of sex too much
attention is very apt either to have no wife at all,
(01:26):
or else. Four or five. If a Franciscan friar of
the olden time happened to glance at a clothes line
on which gaily waving in the wanton winds was a
smock frock, he wore peas in his sandals for a
month and a day. The Shaker does not count women
out because the founder of the sect was a woman,
but he is a complete celibate and depends on gentiles
(01:47):
to populate the earth. The Dunkard quotes Saint Paul and
marries because he must, but regards romantic love as a
thing of which Deity is jealous and also a bit ashamed.
The Oneada community clung to the same thought, and to
obliterate selfishness, held women in common, tracing pedigree after the
manner of ancient Sparta through the female line, because there
(02:11):
was no other way. The Mormon incidentally and accidentally adopted polygamy.
The Quakers have, for the best part, looked with disfavor
on passionate love in the worship of Deity. They separate
women from men, but all oscillations are equalized by swingings
to the other side. The Quakers have often discarded a
distinctive marriage ceremony, thus slanting towards natural selection. And I
(02:35):
might tell you of how in one of the South
American states, there is a band of friends who have
discarded the right entirely, making marriage a private and personal
contract between the man and the woman, a sacred matter
of conscience. And should the man and woman find after
a trial that their mating was a mistake, they are
as free to separate as they were to marry, and
(02:55):
no obloquy is attached in any event. Harriet Martineau, Quaker,
in sympathy, although not in name, being an independent fighter
armed with a long squirrel rifle of marvelous range and accuracy,
pleaded strongly and boldly for a law that would make
divorces free and simple as marriage. Harriet once called marriage
a mouse trap, and thereby sent shivers of surprise and
(03:18):
indignation up a bishop's back. But there is one thing
among all these quasi ascetic sects that has ever been
in advance of the great mass of humanity from which
they are detached. Parts they have given woman her rights,
whereas the mass has always prated and as yet mentioning
it in statute law, that the male has certain natural
(03:40):
rights and the women only such rights as are granted
her by the males. And the reason of this wrong
headed attitude on part of the mob is plain. It
rules by force, whereas the semi ascetic sex decry force
using only moral suasion, falling back on the christ doctrine
of non resis. This has given their women a chance
(04:03):
to prove that they have just as able minds as
the men, if not better. That these non resistance are
the salt of the earth. None who know them can deny.
It was the residence of the monasteries in the Middle
Ages who kept learning and art from dying off the
face of Europe. Such churches and perform such splendid work
in art that we are hushed into silence before the
(04:24):
dignity of the ruins of Melrose, Dryburgh and Furnace. There
are no paupers among the Quakers. A criminal class is
a thing no Mennonite understands. No dunkard is a drunkard.
The Oneida Communists were all well educated and in dollars
passing rich while the Mormons have accumulated wealth at the
rate of over eleven hundred dollars a man per year,
(04:47):
which is more than three times as good a record
as can be shown by New York or Pennsylvania. And further,
until the Gentiles bore down upon her, Utah had no
use for either prisons, asylums, or arms houses. Until the
Gentiles crowded into Salt Lake City, there was no tenderloin district,
no dangerous class, no gambling dives. Instead, there was universal order, industry, sobriety.
(05:12):
It is well to recognize the facts that the quasi aesthetic,
possessed of a religious idea, persecuted to a point that
holds him to his work, is the best type of
citizen the world has ever known. Tobacco, strong drink, and
opium alternately lull and excite, soothe, and elevate, but always destroy.
Yet they do not destroy or esthetic, for he knows
(05:34):
them not. He does not deplete himself by drugs, rivalry, strife,
or anger. He believes in cooperation, not competition. He works
and prays, He keeps a good digestion and even pulse,
a clear conscience, and as man's true wants are very few.
While subject grows rich and has not only ample supplies
for himself, but is enabled to minister to others. He
(05:56):
is Earth's good Samaritan. It was Tolstoy and his daughter
whose started super houses in Russia and kept famine at bay.
Your true monk never passed by on the other side.
Ah No, The business of the old time priest was
to do good. The Quaker is his best descendant. He
is the true philanthropist. If jeered, hooted, and finally oppressed,
(06:17):
these protesters will form a clan or sect and adopt
a distinctive garb and speech. It persecuted, they will hold
together as cattle on the prairies, huddled against the storm.
But if left alone, the law of reversion to type
catches the second generation, and the young men and maidens
secrete millinery just as birds do a brilliant plumage, and
(06:38):
the strange sect merges into and is lost in the mass.
The Jews did not say go to we will be peculiar,
But as mister Zangwill has stated, they have remained a
peculiar people simply because they have been proscribed. The successful monk,
grown rich and feeling secure, turns voluxury and becomes the
very thing that he renounced in his monastic vows. Anxious
(07:00):
bicyclists run into the object they wish to avoid. We
are attracted to the thing we despise, and we despise
it because it attracts. A Recognition of this principle will
make plain why so many temperance fanatics are really drunkards
trying to keep sober in us. All is the germ
of the thing we hate. We become like the thing
we hate. We are the thing we hate. Ex Quakers
(07:23):
in Philadelphia, I am told, are very dressy, But before
a woman becomes a genuine, admitted non Quaker, the rough
gray woolen dress shades off by almost imperceptible degrees into
a dainty, silken lilac, whose generous folds have a most
peculiar and seductive rustle. The bonnet becomes smaller and pertly
(07:44):
assumes are becoming ruche, from under which steal forth daring
winsome ringlets, while at the neck purest of cream white
kerchiefs jealously conceal the charms that a mere worldly woman
might reveal. Then the demimonde, finding themselves neglected, bribe the
guess makers and adopt the costume. Thus does civilization, like
the cyclone move in spirals. In a sermon preached at
(08:08):
the City Temple June eighteen, eighteen hundred ninety six, Dr
Joseph Parker said there it was there at Smithfield Market,
a stone's throw from here, that Ridley and Latimer were burned.
Over this spot the smoke of martyr's fires hovered, and
I pray for a time when they will hover again. Aye,
that is what we need. The rack, the gallows, chains, dungeons, faggots. Yes,
(08:32):
those are his words. And it was two days before
it came to me that Dr Parker knew just what
he was talking about. Persecution cannot stamp out virtue any
more than man's effort can obliterate matter. Man changes the
form of things, but he does not cancel their essence.
And this is as true of the unseen attributes of
spirit as it is of the elements of matter. Did
(08:55):
the truths taught by Latimer and Ridley go out with
the flames that crackled about their limbs? Were their names
written for the last time in smoke? Twas vain to
ask the bishop who instigated their persecution gave them certificates
for immorality, but the bishop did not know it. Bishops
who persecute know not what they do. Let us guess
(09:15):
the result. If Jesus had been eminently successful gathering about
him with the years, the strong and influential men of Jerusalem,
suppose he had fallen asleep at last of old age,
and full of honors, been carried to his own tomb
Joseph of Arimathea, but richer far What then? And if
Socrates had apologized and had not drunk of the hemlock,
(09:37):
how about his philosophy? And would Plato have written the fido?
No religion is pure except in its state of poverty
and persecution. The good things of earth are our corruptors.
All life is from the sun, but fruit, too well
loved of the sun, falls first and rots. The religion
that is fostered by the state and upheld by a
standing army may be a pretty good religion, but it
(10:00):
is not the Christ's religion. Call you it Christianity. Never
so loudly. Martyr and persecutor are usually cut off the
same piece. They are the same type of man, and
looking down the centuries, they seem to have shifted places easily.
As to which his persecutor and which is martyr is
only a question of transient power. They are constantly teaching
(10:20):
the trick to each other, just as scolding parents have
saucy children. They are both good people. Their sincerity cannot
be doubted. Marcus Aurelius, the best emperor Rome ever, had
persecuted the Christians, while Caligula, Rome's worst emperor, didn't know
there were any Christians in his dominions, and if he
had known, would not have cared. The persecutor and the
(10:42):
martyr both belong to the cultus known as muscular Christianity,
the distinguishing feature of which is a final appeal to force.
We should, however, respect it for the frankness of the
name in which it delights, Muscular Christianity being a totally
different thing from Christianity, which smitten turns the other cheek.
But the quaker, best type of the non resistant quasi ascetic,
(11:05):
is the exception that proves the rule. He may be persecuted,
but he persecutes not again. He is the best authenticated
type living of primitive christian that the religion of Jesus
was a purely reactionary movement suggested by the smug, complacency,
and voluptuous condition of the times. Most thinking men agree.
(11:26):
Where rich pharisees adopt a standard of life that can
only be maintained by devouring widows houses and oppressing the orphan,
the needs of the hour bring to the front a
man who will swing the pendulum to the other side.
When society plays tennis with truth and pitch and toss
with all the expressions of love and friendship, certain ones
will confine their speech to yea, yea, and nay nay.
(11:48):
When men utter loud prayers on street corners, someone will
suggest that the better way to pray is to retire
to your closet and shut the door. When self appointed
rulers wear purple and scarlet and make broad their philactories,
someone will suggest that honest men had better adopt a
simplicity of attire. When a whole nation grows mad in
its hot endeavor to become rich, and the temple of
(12:11):
the most high is cumbered by the seats of money changers,
already in some Galilean village sits a youth, conscious of
his divine kinship, platting a scourge of cords. The gray
garb of the Quaker is only a revulsion from a
flutter of ribbons and a towering headgear of hues that
shame the lily and rival the rainbow. Beau Brummel, lifting
(12:31):
his hat with great flourish to nobility and standing hatless
in the presence of illustrious nobodies, finds his counterpart in
William Penn, who was born with his hat on and
uncovers to no one. The height of Brummel's hat finds
place in the width of Penns. Quakerism is a protest
against an idle, vain, voluptuous and selfish life. It is
(12:53):
the natural recoil from insincerity, vanity, and gormandism, which, growing
glaringly offensive, causes these certain men and women to come
out and stand firm for plain living and high thinking.
And were it not for this divine principle in humanity
that prompts individuals to separate from the mass when sensuality
(13:13):
threatens to whole supreme sway, the race would be snuffed
out in hopeless night. These men who come out affects
their mission not by making all men come out as
but by imperceptibly changing the complexion of the mass. They
are the true and literal saviors of mankind. Norwich has
several things to recommend it to the tourist, chief of
(13:35):
which is the cathedral. Great, massive, sullen structure. Begun in
the eleventh century, it adheres more closely to its Norman
type than does any other building in England. Within sound
of the tolling bells of this great cathedral, I almost
within the shadow of its turrets, was born in seventeen
hundred eighty Elizabeth Gurney. Her line of ancestry traced directly
(13:58):
back to the de Gournays, who came with William the
Conqueror and laid the foundations of this church and of
England's civilization. To the sensitive, imaginative girl, this sacred temple,
replete with history fading off into storied song and curious legend,
meant much. She haunted its solemn transepts and followed with
eager eyes the carved bosses on the ceiling to see
(14:21):
if the cherubs pictured there were really alive. She took
children from the street and conducted them thither, explaining that
it was her grandfather who laid the mortar between the
stones and reared the walls and placed the splendid colored
windows on which reflections of real angels were to be seen,
and where Madonnas winked when the sun was east, and
the children listened with open mouths and marveled much. And
(14:44):
this encouraged the pale little girl with the wandering eyes,
and she led them to the tomb of Sir William Berlin,
whose granddaughter Anne Boleyn used often to come here and
garland with flowers the grave above which our toddlers talked
in whispers, and where yesterday I too stood. And so
Elizabeth grew in years, and in stature, and in understanding.
(15:04):
And although her parents were not members of the established religion,
yet a great cathedral is greater than sect, and to
her it was the true house of prayer. It was
there that God listened to the prayers of his children.
She loved the place with an idolatrous love and with
all the splendid superstition of a child. And thither she
went to kneel and ask fulfillment of her heart's desire.
(15:25):
All the beauties of ancient and innocent days moved radiant
and luminous in the azure of her mind. But time
crept on and a woman's penetrating comprehension came to her,
and the dreams of youth shifted off into the realities
of maturity. And she saw that many who came to
pray were careless, frivolous people, and that the verges did
(15:46):
their work without more reverence than did the stableman who
cared for her father's horses. And once, when twilight was
veiling the choir and all the worshipers had departed, she
saw a curate strike a match on the cloister, water,
light his pipe, and with the rect to laugh loudly
because the bishop had forgotten and read his to daum
Loudamus before his Gloria in excelsis by degrees. It came
(16:09):
to her that the Lord Bishop of this holy place
was in the employ of the state, and that the
state was master too, of the army and the police,
and the ships that sailed away to New Zealand, carrying
in their holds women and children who never came back.
And men who liked the Lord Bishop had forgotten this
and done that when they should have done the other.
(16:30):
Once in the streets of Norwich, she saw a dozen
men with fetters riveted to their legs, all fastened to
one clanking chain, breaking stone in the drizzle of a
winter rain, and the thought came to her that the
rich ladies wrapped in furs, who rolled by in their
carriages going to the cathedral to pray, were no more
God's children than these wretches breaking stone from the darkness
(16:51):
of a winter morning until darkness settled over the earth
again at night. She saw plainly the patent truth that
if some people wore gaudy and costly raiment, others must
dress in rags. If some ate and drank more than
they needed and wasted the good things of earth, others
must go hungry. If some never worked with their hands,
others must need toil continuously. End of Section fifteen.
Section fifteen of Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Wimen.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot or recording by Michel Eaton. Little Journeys
to the Homes of Famous Women by Albert Hubbard, Section
(00:22):
fifteen Elizabeth Frye, Part one. When thee bills are prison
THEE had better build with the thought ever in thy mind,
that THEE and thy children may occupy the cells. Report
on Paris Prisons addressed to the King of France. The Mennonite, Dunkard, Shaker,
(00:42):
nade A, Communist, Mormon, and Quaker are all one people,
varying only to environment. They are all come outers. They
turn to plain clothes, hard work, religious thought, eschewing the
pomps and vanities of the world, all for the same reasons.
Scratch any one of them and you will find the
true type. The Monk of the Middle Ages was the
(01:04):
same man, his peculiarity being an extreme asceticism that caused
him to count sex a mistake on the part of God.
And this same question has been a stumbling block for
Ages to the type we now have under the glass.
A man who gives the question of sex too much
attention is very apt either to have no wife at all,
(01:26):
or else. Four or five. If a Franciscan friar of
the olden time happened to glance at a clothes line
on which gaily waving in the wanton winds was a
smock frock, he wore peas in his sandals for a
month and a day. The Shaker does not count women
out because the founder of the sect was a woman,
but he is a complete celibate and depends on gentiles
(01:47):
to populate the earth. The Dunkard quotes Saint Paul and
marries because he must, but regards romantic love as a
thing of which Deity is jealous and also a bit ashamed.
The Oneada community clung to the same thought, and to
obliterate selfishness, held women in common, tracing pedigree after the
manner of ancient Sparta through the female line, because there
(02:11):
was no other way. The Mormon incidentally and accidentally adopted polygamy.
The Quakers have, for the best part, looked with disfavor
on passionate love in the worship of Deity. They separate
women from men, but all oscillations are equalized by swingings
to the other side. The Quakers have often discarded a
distinctive marriage ceremony, thus slanting towards natural selection. And I
(02:35):
might tell you of how in one of the South
American states, there is a band of friends who have
discarded the right entirely, making marriage a private and personal
contract between the man and the woman, a sacred matter
of conscience. And should the man and woman find after
a trial that their mating was a mistake, they are
as free to separate as they were to marry, and
(02:55):
no obloquy is attached in any event. Harriet Martineau, Quaker,
in sympathy, although not in name, being an independent fighter
armed with a long squirrel rifle of marvelous range and accuracy,
pleaded strongly and boldly for a law that would make
divorces free and simple as marriage. Harriet once called marriage
a mouse trap, and thereby sent shivers of surprise and
(03:18):
indignation up a bishop's back. But there is one thing
among all these quasi ascetic sects that has ever been
in advance of the great mass of humanity from which
they are detached. Parts they have given woman her rights,
whereas the mass has always prated and as yet mentioning
it in statute law, that the male has certain natural
(03:40):
rights and the women only such rights as are granted
her by the males. And the reason of this wrong
headed attitude on part of the mob is plain. It
rules by force, whereas the semi ascetic sex decry force
using only moral suasion, falling back on the christ doctrine
of non resis. This has given their women a chance
(04:03):
to prove that they have just as able minds as
the men, if not better. That these non resistance are
the salt of the earth. None who know them can deny.
It was the residence of the monasteries in the Middle
Ages who kept learning and art from dying off the
face of Europe. Such churches and perform such splendid work
in art that we are hushed into silence before the
(04:24):
dignity of the ruins of Melrose, Dryburgh and Furnace. There
are no paupers among the Quakers. A criminal class is
a thing no Mennonite understands. No dunkard is a drunkard.
The Oneida Communists were all well educated and in dollars
passing rich while the Mormons have accumulated wealth at the
rate of over eleven hundred dollars a man per year,
(04:47):
which is more than three times as good a record
as can be shown by New York or Pennsylvania. And further,
until the Gentiles bore down upon her, Utah had no
use for either prisons, asylums, or arms houses. Until the
Gentiles crowded into Salt Lake City, there was no tenderloin district,
no dangerous class, no gambling dives. Instead, there was universal order, industry, sobriety.
(05:12):
It is well to recognize the facts that the quasi aesthetic,
possessed of a religious idea, persecuted to a point that
holds him to his work, is the best type of
citizen the world has ever known. Tobacco, strong drink, and
opium alternately lull and excite, soothe, and elevate, but always destroy.
Yet they do not destroy or esthetic, for he knows
(05:34):
them not. He does not deplete himself by drugs, rivalry, strife,
or anger. He believes in cooperation, not competition. He works
and prays, He keeps a good digestion and even pulse,
a clear conscience, and as man's true wants are very few.
While subject grows rich and has not only ample supplies
for himself, but is enabled to minister to others. He
(05:56):
is Earth's good Samaritan. It was Tolstoy and his daughter
whose started super houses in Russia and kept famine at bay.
Your true monk never passed by on the other side.
Ah No, The business of the old time priest was
to do good. The Quaker is his best descendant. He
is the true philanthropist. If jeered, hooted, and finally oppressed,
(06:17):
these protesters will form a clan or sect and adopt
a distinctive garb and speech. It persecuted, they will hold
together as cattle on the prairies, huddled against the storm.
But if left alone, the law of reversion to type
catches the second generation, and the young men and maidens
secrete millinery just as birds do a brilliant plumage, and
(06:38):
the strange sect merges into and is lost in the mass.
The Jews did not say go to we will be peculiar,
But as mister Zangwill has stated, they have remained a
peculiar people simply because they have been proscribed. The successful monk,
grown rich and feeling secure, turns voluxury and becomes the
very thing that he renounced in his monastic vows. Anxious
(07:00):
bicyclists run into the object they wish to avoid. We
are attracted to the thing we despise, and we despise
it because it attracts. A Recognition of this principle will
make plain why so many temperance fanatics are really drunkards
trying to keep sober in us. All is the germ
of the thing we hate. We become like the thing
we hate. We are the thing we hate. Ex Quakers
(07:23):
in Philadelphia, I am told, are very dressy, But before
a woman becomes a genuine, admitted non Quaker, the rough
gray woolen dress shades off by almost imperceptible degrees into
a dainty, silken lilac, whose generous folds have a most
peculiar and seductive rustle. The bonnet becomes smaller and pertly
(07:44):
assumes are becoming ruche, from under which steal forth daring
winsome ringlets, while at the neck purest of cream white
kerchiefs jealously conceal the charms that a mere worldly woman
might reveal. Then the demimonde, finding themselves neglected, bribe the
guess makers and adopt the costume. Thus does civilization, like
the cyclone move in spirals. In a sermon preached at
(08:08):
the City Temple June eighteen, eighteen hundred ninety six, Dr
Joseph Parker said there it was there at Smithfield Market,
a stone's throw from here, that Ridley and Latimer were burned.
Over this spot the smoke of martyr's fires hovered, and
I pray for a time when they will hover again. Aye,
that is what we need. The rack, the gallows, chains, dungeons, faggots. Yes,
(08:32):
those are his words. And it was two days before
it came to me that Dr Parker knew just what
he was talking about. Persecution cannot stamp out virtue any
more than man's effort can obliterate matter. Man changes the
form of things, but he does not cancel their essence.
And this is as true of the unseen attributes of
spirit as it is of the elements of matter. Did
(08:55):
the truths taught by Latimer and Ridley go out with
the flames that crackled about their limbs? Were their names
written for the last time in smoke? Twas vain to
ask the bishop who instigated their persecution gave them certificates
for immorality, but the bishop did not know it. Bishops
who persecute know not what they do. Let us guess
(09:15):
the result. If Jesus had been eminently successful gathering about
him with the years, the strong and influential men of Jerusalem,
suppose he had fallen asleep at last of old age,
and full of honors, been carried to his own tomb
Joseph of Arimathea, but richer far What then? And if
Socrates had apologized and had not drunk of the hemlock,
(09:37):
how about his philosophy? And would Plato have written the fido?
No religion is pure except in its state of poverty
and persecution. The good things of earth are our corruptors.
All life is from the sun, but fruit, too well
loved of the sun, falls first and rots. The religion
that is fostered by the state and upheld by a
standing army may be a pretty good religion, but it
(10:00):
is not the Christ's religion. Call you it Christianity. Never
so loudly. Martyr and persecutor are usually cut off the
same piece. They are the same type of man, and
looking down the centuries, they seem to have shifted places easily.
As to which his persecutor and which is martyr is
only a question of transient power. They are constantly teaching
(10:20):
the trick to each other, just as scolding parents have
saucy children. They are both good people. Their sincerity cannot
be doubted. Marcus Aurelius, the best emperor Rome ever, had
persecuted the Christians, while Caligula, Rome's worst emperor, didn't know
there were any Christians in his dominions, and if he
had known, would not have cared. The persecutor and the
(10:42):
martyr both belong to the cultus known as muscular Christianity,
the distinguishing feature of which is a final appeal to force.
We should, however, respect it for the frankness of the
name in which it delights, Muscular Christianity being a totally
different thing from Christianity, which smitten turns the other cheek.
But the quaker, best type of the non resistant quasi ascetic,
(11:05):
is the exception that proves the rule. He may be persecuted,
but he persecutes not again. He is the best authenticated
type living of primitive christian that the religion of Jesus
was a purely reactionary movement suggested by the smug, complacency,
and voluptuous condition of the times. Most thinking men agree.
(11:26):
Where rich pharisees adopt a standard of life that can
only be maintained by devouring widows houses and oppressing the orphan,
the needs of the hour bring to the front a
man who will swing the pendulum to the other side.
When society plays tennis with truth and pitch and toss
with all the expressions of love and friendship, certain ones
will confine their speech to yea, yea, and nay nay.
(11:48):
When men utter loud prayers on street corners, someone will
suggest that the better way to pray is to retire
to your closet and shut the door. When self appointed
rulers wear purple and scarlet and make broad their philactories,
someone will suggest that honest men had better adopt a
simplicity of attire. When a whole nation grows mad in
its hot endeavor to become rich, and the temple of
(12:11):
the most high is cumbered by the seats of money changers,
already in some Galilean village sits a youth, conscious of
his divine kinship, platting a scourge of cords. The gray
garb of the Quaker is only a revulsion from a
flutter of ribbons and a towering headgear of hues that
shame the lily and rival the rainbow. Beau Brummel, lifting
(12:31):
his hat with great flourish to nobility and standing hatless
in the presence of illustrious nobodies, finds his counterpart in
William Penn, who was born with his hat on and
uncovers to no one. The height of Brummel's hat finds
place in the width of Penns. Quakerism is a protest
against an idle, vain, voluptuous and selfish life. It is
(12:53):
the natural recoil from insincerity, vanity, and gormandism, which, growing
glaringly offensive, causes these certain men and women to come
out and stand firm for plain living and high thinking.
And were it not for this divine principle in humanity
that prompts individuals to separate from the mass when sensuality
(13:13):
threatens to whole supreme sway, the race would be snuffed
out in hopeless night. These men who come out affects
their mission not by making all men come out as
but by imperceptibly changing the complexion of the mass. They
are the true and literal saviors of mankind. Norwich has
several things to recommend it to the tourist, chief of
(13:35):
which is the cathedral. Great, massive, sullen structure. Begun in
the eleventh century, it adheres more closely to its Norman
type than does any other building in England. Within sound
of the tolling bells of this great cathedral, I almost
within the shadow of its turrets, was born in seventeen
hundred eighty Elizabeth Gurney. Her line of ancestry traced directly
(13:58):
back to the de Gournays, who came with William the
Conqueror and laid the foundations of this church and of
England's civilization. To the sensitive, imaginative girl, this sacred temple,
replete with history fading off into storied song and curious legend,
meant much. She haunted its solemn transepts and followed with
eager eyes the carved bosses on the ceiling to see
(14:21):
if the cherubs pictured there were really alive. She took
children from the street and conducted them thither, explaining that
it was her grandfather who laid the mortar between the
stones and reared the walls and placed the splendid colored
windows on which reflections of real angels were to be seen,
and where Madonnas winked when the sun was east, and
the children listened with open mouths and marveled much. And
(14:44):
this encouraged the pale little girl with the wandering eyes,
and she led them to the tomb of Sir William Berlin,
whose granddaughter Anne Boleyn used often to come here and
garland with flowers the grave above which our toddlers talked
in whispers, and where yesterday I too stood. And so
Elizabeth grew in years, and in stature, and in understanding.
(15:04):
And although her parents were not members of the established religion,
yet a great cathedral is greater than sect, and to
her it was the true house of prayer. It was
there that God listened to the prayers of his children.
She loved the place with an idolatrous love and with
all the splendid superstition of a child. And thither she
went to kneel and ask fulfillment of her heart's desire.
(15:25):
All the beauties of ancient and innocent days moved radiant
and luminous in the azure of her mind. But time
crept on and a woman's penetrating comprehension came to her,
and the dreams of youth shifted off into the realities
of maturity. And she saw that many who came to
pray were careless, frivolous people, and that the verges did
(15:46):
their work without more reverence than did the stableman who
cared for her father's horses. And once, when twilight was
veiling the choir and all the worshipers had departed, she
saw a curate strike a match on the cloister, water,
light his pipe, and with the rect to laugh loudly
because the bishop had forgotten and read his to daum
Loudamus before his Gloria in excelsis by degrees. It came
(16:09):
to her that the Lord Bishop of this holy place
was in the employ of the state, and that the
state was master too, of the army and the police,
and the ships that sailed away to New Zealand, carrying
in their holds women and children who never came back.
And men who liked the Lord Bishop had forgotten this
and done that when they should have done the other.
(16:30):
Once in the streets of Norwich, she saw a dozen
men with fetters riveted to their legs, all fastened to
one clanking chain, breaking stone in the drizzle of a
winter rain, and the thought came to her that the
rich ladies wrapped in furs, who rolled by in their
carriages going to the cathedral to pray, were no more
God's children than these wretches breaking stone from the darkness
(16:51):
of a winter morning until darkness settled over the earth
again at night. She saw plainly the patent truth that
if some people wore gaudy and costly raiment, others must
dress in rags. If some ate and drank more than
they needed and wasted the good things of earth, others
must go hungry. If some never worked with their hands,
others must need toil continuously. End of Section fifteen.
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