Chapter VII: Part 7

We give from the _Erläuterung_, or Explanation, some striking extracts upon some of these points. Upon the word of God, Schwenkfeld and Illyricus had a violent contest. Schwenkfeld holds that the tables upon which God writes, and the book or paper upon which man writes, are entirely two kinds of thing: between all printed and written books in the world and the true word of God a fundamental difference is to be maintained. The word is a living, internal, spiritual word, and can only be contained in the book of the believing heart.[157] Faith existed many hundred years before the Scripture. It proceeded from the eternal Word or Son of God, Jesus Christ, and from God, the All-powerful.[158]

Against what are called “the means of grace” Schwenkfeld preached. (Spiritual things, it is said, come not through canals.) Schwenkfeld maintained that Christ is only to be sought above with the Father, and thence we must all draw that which will make us upright and blessed. This was also recognized by the leaders who came out from the papacy; but there came a time when they taught that Christ and salvation were to be found below in external works and worship. But Schwenkfeld neither could nor would admit that Christ and the Holy Spirit were in outward works of preaching and hearing and in elements of this earthly existence, in water, bread, and wine.[159]

On baptism we find the following: The first and most eminent work of the sacrament of baptism is, the internal grace of inworking faith in the love of God, which moves, glows, and lives through the outpouring of the heavenly waters which flow from the Word of God, which is Christ. The other point is the external word and water which is outwardly poured upon and washes the body outwardly as the internal does the soul.

John the Baptist says, “I baptize with water to repentance, but he who comes after me will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Here he distinguishes the work of the minister from the office of the Lord, and the visible water from the Holy Spirit.

Ambrose says, “Peter has not purified, nor Ambrose, nor Gregory, for ours is the ministry, but thine, Lord, are the sacraments. It is not the work of man to give divine things, thine is it, Lord, and the Father’s, who says through the prophets [prophet,] I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”

That the subject of the Holy Supper is especially weighty may be judged by the agitations on account of it, and by the fact that on this account many thousands in many lands have been killed and burnt. And this was the article upon which the Reformers, with their gloriously begun work, fell to pieces. Upon this article Luther renounced his friendship to Schwenkfeld, and they publicly differed.[160]

Schwenkfeld thought that when they came out from the papacy they should preach the gospel in its purity, instruct old and young in the catechism, and earnestly pray until they could come to the right use of the sacrament.... Whereby whole parishes, towns, and countries should not at once be taken up, as if fit for the table of the Lord. But it should be held with those who received the word, and in whom there were tokens of amendment, whether these were only Caleb and Joshua. Schwenkfeld declared that he had no command to establish the sacraments, but his command had been to spread the gospel and point every man to Jesus Christ. “But we are comforted that we are instructed by God and from the Holy Scripture that our soul’s salvation is necessarily placed on no outward thing, but that one thing is needful.” (Luke x.) “But we pray the Lord Jesus Christ that he will reveal a right use of the sacraments, and himself establish them. We strive, moreover, to hold his supper daily with the Lord Christ, in the spirit of faith.” (Rev. iii.[161]) But though Schwenkfeld did not feel called upon to establish the sacraments, there is nothing in the catechism of the society opposed to the external rites.

The twelfth chapter of the Explanation, containing nearly eighty pages, is devoted to Schwenkfeld’s peculiar doctrine, of which I shall content myself with the heading of the chapter, as follows: “Of the divine Sonship and glory of the Manhood of Jesus Christ, that the same is no creature, but extinguished in the Transfiguration, and changed into the Godhead.”

To one passage in the Catechism I would like to call attention:

_Question._—How did God reveal himself in an external manner?

_Answer._—First, when God, by his almighty word, framed the universe, by which he has shown how great, almighty, wise, and good he is.[162]

And now may we not also rest our souls upon these expressions from the constitution of the Schwenkfelder society, translated almost literally?

In the nature of God, we first perceive love as that noble and outflowing power which binds God and men together.... If the society build upon this fundamental part of the divine nature, namely, love, then their only immovable aim will be, first, the glory of God, and second, the promotion of the common weal of every member.

* * * * *

The preceding article is published nearly as it appeared in the second edition of this work, which was issued late in 1873, with the date 1874. Almost as soon as the edition appeared, I learned that baptism had been introduced among the Schwenkfelders at a meeting held a few months before; and that perhaps in two cases it had also been administered at the approach of death.

In the spring of the present year, 1882, I visited a Schwenkfelder settlement in the upper part of Montgomery County, and was hospitably entertained at the house of one of their preachers. German or the Pennsylvania dialect was the language of the family. On Sunday I attended church, where, as before in another locality, the services were in German, as were nearly all the proceedings in the Sunday-school. Here I learned that the rite of the Supper has also been introduced among the Schwenkfelders, though not without opposition. I inquired on what grounds the opposition was brought, but received no satisfactory reply.

* * * * *

At the house of my entertainer I was shown a volume, published in 1879, containing a genealogical record of the descendants of the Schwenkfelders in this country, to which is prefixed a historical sketch by C. Heydrick, a lawyer of Franklin, Pennsylvania.

Herein it is stated that Schwenkfeld differed with Luther on several points; chiefly on the eucharist, the efficacy of the divine word, the human nature of Christ, and baptism.

Schwenkfeld held, says the writer, that the penitent believer partakes of the bread and the body of the Lord, not only at the sacramental altar, but elsewhere.

On the second point Schwenkfeld denied that the external word in the Scriptures has the power of healing and renewing the mind, but ascribed this power to the internal word, Christ himself. He regretted that Luther, who at first agreed with him, saw fit afterward to ascribe to the written or preached word the efficacy which is only in Christ, the eternal word.

Further, Schwenkfeld rejected infant baptism, and held that baptism and the Supper were not intended as means by which the unregenerate partaker can obtain salvation.

* * * * *

Two other volumes on these subjects have very lately come within my notice. One in German, by a pastor named Kadelbach, published about 1860, at Lauban, which is within forty miles of the city of Liegnitz, where Schwenkfeld was canon in a church. As early as 1846, in composing a history of the village of Probsthayn (where some of the Schwenkfelders formerly lived), he added to it some material concerning these people.

As this subject attracted attention, he endeavored to obtain material for a history of them, in which matter he met with much difficulty. It came to pass, however, that the Schwenkfelders in America sent an inquiry to the burgomaster of Probsthayn, asking whether there were still Schwenkfelder communities (_Gemeinden_) there. This inquiry came, in 1855, into the hands of Kadelbach, who was very glad to communicate with the Schwenkfelders in America, as he had never before been able to do. His volume is called “Complete History of Kaspar von Schwenkfeld and of the Schwenkfelders in Silesia, Upper Lusatia, and America.”[163] A copy has been placed in the archives of the German Society’s library in Philadelphia.

We may inter that the attention of the author was attracted to his subject by certain local objects or remains. He tells us that the Catholic chapel at Harpersdorf, and the graves on the cow-path (_viehweg_), are the last memorials that testify of the existence there, and of the persecution of the Schwenkfelders. The Catholic chapel was built for one of the missionaries who was striving to convert them. As to the graves on the cow-paths, the statement has before been quoted (in a note on page 222), that three hundred persons lay upon the cow-paths at Harpersdorf and Langenneudorff (or Langendorff).

The other volume in which the Schwenkfelders are especially noticed is Barclay’s Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth. London, 1876. Barclay finds that on several points the teaching of Schwenkfeld was identical with that of George Fox, the first Quaker. Barclay gives a passage from Schwenkfeld, in which he says that the true knowledge of Christ, that which is according to the Holy Ghost must be expected, not alone out of the Scriptures, but much more from the gifts of grace revealed by the Father, yet so that this revelation should always be in unison with the witness of the Scriptures.[164]

Struck with the similarity between the Schwenkfelders and Quakers, Barclay appears to have written to the former, and to have received an answer, from which the following passages are taken:

To Robert Barclay, England:

... “Judging from the brief notices of the teachings of George
Fox in our possession, we have reason to believe that they did
not differ materially from those of Schwenkfeld, and among
the followers of both, here in America, there is a striking
similarity in the almost total absence of formalities and
ceremonies in their religious practices. Both are discarding
judicial oaths, carnal weapons, and are unostentatious in dress.

“Notwithstanding the fact that the Friends are of English
descent, having their books, worship, and conversation in the
English language, and the followers of Schwenkfeld here all
of it in German, yet there always existed a lively sympathy,
love, and esteem between the parties.... It is, however, proper
to mention the fact that neither in Europe nor here have the
followers of Schwenkfeld at any time administered baptism and
the Lord’s Supper.[165]

“Owing to the persecutions which prevailed from 1630 to 1640,
the religious practices of our ancestors in Germany about that
period were chiefly confined to meeting in private houses for
prayer and admonition, and in endeavors in the daily work of
life to imitate as much as possible the example of the heavenly
Master.

“In the love of Christ, sincerely your friends,

“GEORGE MESCHTER.
“WILLIAM SCHULTZ.
“JACOB MESCHTER.
“Per DAN. S. SHULTZ.

“December 17th, 1875. COLEBROOKDALE, PENNA.”

A FRIEND.

About twenty miles from the line that divides Maryland and Pennsylvania, there stands, in the latter State, a retired farm-house, which was erected more than fifty years ago by Samuel Wilson, a Quaker of Quakers.

His was a character so rare in its quaintness and its nobility, that it might serve as a theme for a pen more practised and more skilful than the one that now essays to portray it.

Samuel Wilson was by nature romantic. When comparatively young, he made a pedestrian tour to the Falls of Niagara, stopping upon his return journey, and hiring with a farmer to recruit his exhausted funds; and when he had passed his grand climacteric, the enthusiasm of his friendship for the young, fair, and virtuous, still showed the poetic side of his character.

Veneration induced him to cherish the relics of his ancestry,—not only the genealogical tree, which traced the Wilsons back to the time of William Penn, and the marriage certificates of his father and grandfather, according to the regular order of the Society of Friends; but such more humble and familiar heirlooms as the tall eight-day clock, and the high bookcase upon a desk and chest of drawers, that had been his father’s, as well as the strong kitchen-chairs and extremely heavy fire-irons of his grandfather.

To this day there stands beside the Wilson farm-house a stone taken from one of the buildings erected by Samuel’s father, and preserved as an heirloom. Upon it the great-grandchildren read nearly the following inscription:

“James Wilson, ejus manus scripsit. [His hand wrote.] Deborah Wilson, 5 mo. 23d, 1757.”

Samuel Wilson, having been trained from his earliest years to that plainness of speech in which the Discipline requires that Friends bring up those under their care, not only discarded in speaking the simple titles in use in common conversation, but did not himself desire to be addressed as Mr. Wilson.

A colored woman, the wife of one of his tenants, said that he refused to answer her when she thus spoke to him.

A pleasant euphemism was generally employed by these people in addressing him. He and his wife were “Uncle Samuel” and “Aunt Anna” to their numerous dependents.

The apparel of Samuel and Anna was of the strict pattern of their own religious sect. To employ a figure of speech, it was the “wedding-garment,” without which, at that time and place, they would not have become elders in their society, and thus been entitled to sit with ministers, etc., upon the rising seats that faced the rest of the meeting.

But the plainness of Uncle Samuel was not limited to the fashion of his own garments. When Aunt Anna had made for her son a suit of domestic cloth, dyed brown with the hulls of the black walnut, and had arrayed him in his new clothes, of which the trousers were made roomy behind,—or, as the humorist says, “baggy in the reverse,”—she looked upon him with maternal pride and fondness, and exclaimed, “There’s my son!”

For this ejaculation she was not only reproved at the time by her husband, but in after-years, whenever he heard her, as he thought, thus fostering in the mind of their dear and only child pride in external appearance, he repeated the expression, “There’s my son!” which saying conveyed a volume of reproof.

From this and other circumstances of the kind, it may be supposed that Friend Wilson was a cold or bitter ascetic. But he possessed a vein of humor, and could be gently and pleasantly rallied when he seemed to run into extremes. But, though his intellect was good, the moral sentiments predominated in his character. His head was lofty and arched. His wants were very few; he possessed an ample competence, and he had no ambition to enter upon the fatiguing chase after riches. He disliked acquisitive men as much as the latter despised him. “I want so little for myself,” he said, “I think that I might be allowed to give something away.”

Sometimes—but rarely—a little abruptness was seen in his behavior. He had the manners of a gentleman by birth,—tender and true, open to melting charity, thinking humbly of himself, and respecting others.

The vein of humor to which I have alluded prompted the reply which he made on a certain occasion to a mechanic or laboring man employed in his own family. In this section of Lancaster County the farming population is composed principally of a laborious and in some respects a humble-minded people, who sit at table and eat with their hired people of both sexes.

The same custom was pursued by Samuel and Anna; but, as their hired people were mostly colored, they sometimes offended the prejudices or tastes of many who were not accustomed to this equality of treatment, which was maintained by several families of Friends. The white hired man to whom I have alluded, when he perceived who were seated at the table, hesitated or refused to sit down among them. As soon as Samuel was conscious of the difficulty, for which indeed his mind was not unprepared, he thus spoke aloud to his wife: “Anna, will thee set a plate at that other table for this stranger? He does not want to sit down with us.” And his request was quietly obeyed. The man who was thus set apart probably became tired of this peculiar seclusion, for he did not stay long at the Quaker homestead.

I think that Samuel was also in a humorous mood when he called that unpretending instrument, the accordion,—from which his daughter-in-law was striving one evening to draw forth musical sounds,—“Mary’s fiddle.” But, indeed, he left the house and went to call upon a neighbor, so greatly did he partake of that prejudice which was felt by most Friends against music.

The Discipline asks whether Friends are punctual to their promises; and (to quote a very different work) Fielding tells us that Squire Allworthy was not only careful to keep his greater engagements, but remembered also his promises to visit his friends.

Anna Wilson on one occasion having thoughtlessly made such a promise,—as, indeed, those in society frequently do when their friends say, “Come and see us,”—was often reminded of it in after-years by her husband. When he heard her lightly accepting such invitations, he would reprove her by saying in private, “When is thee going to see Benjamin Smith?”—the neighbor to whom the ancient promise was still unfulfilled.

The hospitality which the Scriptures enjoin was practised to a remarkable degree by Samuel and Anna. It has always been customary in their religious society to entertain Friends who come from a distance to attend meetings, and those travelling as preachers, etc. But the Wilson homestead was a place of rest and entertainment for many more than these. It stood not far from the great highway laid out by William Penn from Philadelphia westward, and here called the “Old Road.” Friends travelling westward in their own conveyance would stop and refresh themselves and their horses at the hospitable mansion, and would further say to their own friends, “Thee’d better stop at Samuel Wilson’s. Tell him I told thee to stop.” A further and greater extent of hospitality I shall mention hereafter.

The Discipline asks whether Friends are careful to keep those under their charge from pernicious books and from the corrupt conversation of the world; and I have heard that Samuel Wilson was grieved when his son began to go to the post-office and take out newspapers. Hitherto the principal periodical that came to the house was _The Genius of Universal Emancipation_, a little paper issued by that pioneer, Benjamin Lundy, who was born and reared in the Society of Friends. It does not appear, however, that the class of publications brought from the little village post-office to the retired farm-house were of the class usually called pernicious. They were _The Liberator_, _The Emancipator_, and others of the same order.

Samuel himself became interested in them, but never to the exclusion of the “Friends’ Miscellany,” a little set of volumes containing religious anecdotes of Friends. These volumes were by him highly prized and frequently read.

It has been said that he was a humorist; and perhaps he was partly jesting when he suggested that his infant granddaughter should be named Tabitha. The mother of the little one, on her part, suggested Helen.

“He-len!” the grandfather broke out in reply; “does thee know who _she_ was?” thus expressing his antipathy to the character of the notorious beauty of Greece. He did not insist, however, on endowing the precious newly-born infant with that peculiar name which is by interpretation Dorcas, the name of her who, in apostolic times, was full of good works and alms-deeds.

Friend Wilson shared the Quaker disregard for the great holidays of the church. To the colored people around him, who had been brought up at the South, where Christmas is so great a festival,—where it was so great a holiday for them especially,—it must have been a sombre change to live in a family where the day passed nearly like other working-days. One of the colored men, however, who had started at the time of the great festival to _take Christmas_, was seen, before long, coming back; “for,” said he, “Massa Wilson don’t ’prove on’t nohow.”

Among the lesser peculiarities of Samuel Wilson was his objection to having his picture taken,—an objection, however, which is felt to this day by some strict people belonging to other religious societies, but probably on somewhat different grounds.

One who warmly loved and greatly respected Friend Wilson took him once to the rooms of an eminent daguerreotypist, hoping that while he engaged the venerable man in looking at the objects around the room, the artist might be able to catch a likeness. But Samuel suspected some artifice, and no picture was taken. Some time after, however, the perseverance of his friend was rewarded by obtaining an excellent oil-painting of the aged man, from whom a reluctant consent to sit for his likeness had at length been obtained. It was remarked, however, that the expression of the face in the painting was sorrowful, as if the honorable man was grieved at complying with a custom which he had long stigmatized as idolatrous,—as idolatry of the perishing body.

Although at the time of the great division in the Society of Friends Samuel Wilson had decidedly taken the part of Elias Hicks, yet was he seldom or never heard to discuss those questions of dogmatic theology which some have thought were involved in that contest.

Samuel probably held, with many others of his Society, that the highest and surest guide which man possesses here is that Light which has been said to illumine every man that comes into the world; that next in importance is a rightly inspired gospel ministry, and afterward the Scriptures of truth. One evening, when certain mechanics in his employ were resting from their labors in the old-fashioned kitchen, he fell into conversation with them on matters of religion, and shocked one of his family, as he entered the sitting-room, by a sudden declaration of opinion. It was probably the uncommon warmth of his manner which produced this effect, quite as much as or more than the words that he spoke, which were nearly as follows: “There’s no use talking about it; the only religion in the world that’s worth anything is what makes men do what is right and leave off doing what is wrong.”

As far as was possible for one with so much fearless independence of thought and action, Samuel Wilson maintained the testimony of Friends against war. Not only did he suffer his corn to be seized in the field rather than voluntarily to pay the military taxes of the last war with Great Britain, but he went to what may appear to some a laughable extreme, in forbidding his young son’s going to the turnpike to see the grand procession which was passing near their house, escorting General Lafayette on his last visit to this country. He was not, however, alone in this. I have heard of other decided Friends who declined to swell the ovation to a man who was especially distinguished as a military hero. But we shall see hereafter that Friend Wilson met with circumstances which tried his non-resistant opinions further than they would bear.

The distinctive trait of his character, however,—that trait which made him exceptional,—was his attachment to the people of color. It was in entertaining fugitives from slavery that he showed the wide hospitality already referred to; and in this active benevolence he was excelled by few in our country. He inherited from his father this love of man; but I have imagined that the hostility to slavery was made broad and deep in his soul by removing, with the rest of his family, in his youth, from Pennsylvania into Delaware, and seeing the bondage which was suffered by colored people in the latter State contrasted with what he had seen in the former. Be that as it may, no sooner was he a householder than his door was ever open to those who were escaping from the South, coming by stealth and in darkness, having travelled in the slave States from the house of one free negro to another, and in Pennsylvania from Quaker to Quaker, until in later times the hostility to slavery increased in our community so far that others became agents of this underground railroad, and other routes were opened.

When the Wilson family came down in the morning, they saw around them these strange sable or yellow travellers (“strangers,” they were called in the family), who, having arrived during the night, had been received by some wakeful member of the household.

What feelings filled the hearts of the exiles! Alone, at times, having left all that they had ever loved of persons or of places, fearful, tired, foot-sore, throwing themselves upon the charity and the honor of a man unknown to them save by name and the direction which they had received to him, as one trustworthy.

Sometimes they came clothed in the undyed woollen cloth that showed so plainly to one experienced in the matter, the region of its manufacture; the heavy, strong cloth which had delighted the wearer’s heart when he received the annual Christmas suit with which his master furnished him, but which was now too peculiar and striking for him safely to wear. Women and children came too, and sometimes in considerable numbers.

When they had eaten and partaken of the necessary repose, they would communicate to Friend Wilson, in a secure situation, some particulars of their former history, especially the names and residences of the masters from whom they had escaped.

Some years after he had begun to entertain these strangers, Friend Wilson commenced a written record of those who came to him, and whence and from whom they had escaped. This list is estimated to have finally contained between five and six hundred names.

The next care was to bestow new titles upon the fugitives, that they might never be known by their former names to the pursuer and the betrayer.

From what has been already said, it may be supposed that these names were not always selected for their euphony or æsthetic associations. One tall, finely-built yellow man, who trembled when he was questioned in the sitting-room, lest his conversation about his old home and the free wife whom he longed to have brought to him should be overheard in the kitchen, expressed to me his dissatisfaction with his new name—Simon. “I never knowed anybody named that,” he said. His beautiful bright wife—bright in the _colored_ sense,—that is, bright-colored, or nearly white,—was secretly and safely brought to him, and nursed him through that fatal disease which made him of no value in the man-market,—the market which had been the great horror of his life. The particulars Friend Wilson collected concerning his humble charge the venerable man entered in his day-book, in a place especially assigned to them. If this record were still existing, I should, perhaps, be able to tell what name the fortunate and unfortunate Simon had been obliged to renounce. This record, however, is lost, as I shall mention hereafter. If the services of any of these fugitives were needed, within-doors or without, and the master’s pursuit was not supposed to be imminent, they were detained for a while, or perhaps became permanent residents in the neighborhood; otherwise, they were forwarded at night to Friends living nearer Philadelphia. Of these, two other families willing to receive the poor exiles lived about twelve miles farther on.

The house and farm were generally pretty well stocked with colored people, who were a wonder to the neighbors of the Wilson family; for these were in a great measure “Pennsylvania Dutch,”—a people anxious to do as much work with their own hands and by the hands of their own family as possible, in order to avoid expense. It is a remarkable circumstance that, although Samuel Wilson during thirty years or more entertained the humble strangers, and although he received so large a number, only one of them was seized upon his “plantation” and taken back to slavery. This was owing partly to the secluded situation of his house, and partly to the prudence and discretion that he exercised. “He was crafty,” it has been said.

Neither did he suffer any legal expenses, such as lawsuits, from the slaveholders who came in pursuit of their fleeing bondmen. Two friends who lived not far from him, and who prosecuted kidnappers, had their barns burned, and others, of whom he had knowledge, suffered great pecuniary loss in consequence of their assisting runaway slaves. He, however, limited his care to receiving, entertaining, and forwarding those who came to him in person, and never undertook any measures of offence,—any border raids, so to speak,—such as sending secretly into Maryland and Virginia for the relatives and friends of fugitives who were still living in those States as slaves. The one person of whom I have spoken, who was recaptured from the Wilson farm, was a young girl of fifteen or sixteen. Samuel and Anna were absent from home at the time, gone on a little journey, such as they frequently took, to attend their own monthly and quarterly meetings; assisting to preserve the discipline and order of the Society of Friends. The men who came in pursuit of the young girl told her that her friends, who had run away too, had concluded to go back South again; and the poor child, under these circumstances, could hardly do anything but go with the beguilers; not, however, to find the friends whom she expected.

There was also a man who was very near being taken,—a man who had “come away,” to use the brief euphemism sometimes employed in the Wilson family in speaking of fugitives from slavery. He escaped by having gone down the creek or adjacent mill-stream to set his muskrat-traps. This creek where it ran by the house was well wooded; therefore the colored man, looking up to the house, could see the white strangers without being seen himself. With what trembling did he see that they were persons whom he “knowed in Murrland,” as he expressed it! However, the friendly woods sheltered him, while Samuel at the house was talking with the slaveholder or his agents,—kidnappers, as the Wilsons called them.

The men told Samuel that they had come after a runaway nigger,—black, five feet ten inches high, lost one of his front teeth, etc. To this description Friend Wilson listened in silence. I do not know what he would have done had he been directly questioned by them, for the different items suited him of the muskrats,—the man who had gone to the woods. But during Samuel’s continued silence they went on to say, “He’s a very ornary nigger; no dependence to be placed on him nohow.” “There is no man here,” rejoined Samuel, greatly relieved, “that answers the description.” “We’ve very good reason to think he came here,” said one; “we got word very direct; reckon he’s lyin’ around here. Hain’t there been no strange nigger here?”

“There was a colored man here, but he has gone away; I don’t know as he will ever come back again.” For, from the man’s protracted absence, he doubtless had some idea of his having seen his pursuers, and having sought shelter.

“Tell him that his master says that if he will only come back again, down to Baltimore County, he sha’n’t be whipped, nor sold, nor nuthin’, but everything shall be looked over.”

“I’ll tell him what you say,” said Samuel, “if ever I see him again; but,” he added, regaining his accustomed independence, “I’ll tell him, too, that if I was in his place I’d never go back to you again.”

The men left, and under cover of the friendly night the fugitive sought a more secure hiding place.

There was one heroic black man in whom Samuel Wilson felt an abiding interest. When Jimmy Franklin told the tale of his perilous escapes and recaptures in the States of Maryland, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida,—when he showed the shot still remaining in his legs—shot that had been fired at him as he ran, and, working through to the front, were perceived through the skin, like warts upon his legs,—the lads of the family looking and listening had their sympathies enkindled in such a manner as could never entirely die out. One of them, in after-years, was asked:

“How does thee account for that man’s persistent love of freedom? What traits of character did he possess that would account for his doing so much more than others to escape from the far South?”

“I don’t know,” was the reply, in the freedom of familiar conversation. “What was the reason that Fulton invented his steamboat? or that Bacon wrote his System? or that Napier invented logarithms?

“This man was a genius,—a greater man in his way than those I spoke of. If he had had education, and had been placed in circumstances to draw him out, he would have been the leader in some great movement among men.”

The narrative of James Franklin was written by a dear friend of him whom I call Samuel Wilson, but is supposed to have been burned when the mob destroyed Pennsylvania Hall.

It was in relation to these fugitives that Samuel sometimes forgot for a while his strictly peaceful principles; for there were to be found among the men of color those who could be induced to betray to the pursuers their fugitive brethren, giving such information as would lead to their recapture; or, if they should escape this, to their being obliged to abandon their resting-places and to flee again for safety.

It was in talking of some such betrayer that Samuel Wilson said to his colored friends, “What would you do with that man, if you had him on Mill-Creek bridge?” (a lofty structure by which the railroad crossed the adjacent stream,) thus hinting at a swift mode of punishment, and one that might possibly have been a fatal one.

Though with an unskilled pen, yet have I endeavored to describe that quiet family among whom the fugitive-slave law of 1850 fell like a blow. Samuel Wilson had ample opportunity to study its provisions and its peculiarities from the newspapers of which I have before spoken, and from the conversation which these journals called forth.

This horrible act gave the commissioner before whom the colored man was tried five dollars only if the man went free from the tribunal, but ten dollars if he was sent into slavery. Hitherto, men had suffered in assisting the fugitive _to escape_; now it was made a penal offence to refuse to lend active assistance in apprehending him.

Friend Wilson had read much of fines and imprisonment, having studied the sufferings of the people called Quakers. (Even a lady of so high a standing as she who became the wife of George Fox was not exempt from many years’ imprisonment, nor from persecution at the hands of her own son.) Friend Wilson was about seventy-five years old when the fugitive-slave bill was passed. In spite of his advanced years, however, after sorrowful reflection upon it, he said to one of his household, “I have made up my mind to go to jail.”

That hospitality and charity which had so long been the rule of his life he was not now prepared to forego through fear of any penalties which the law would inflict upon him.

It was while suffering from the infirmities of advanced years, and from the solicitude which this abominable enactment had called forth, that Samuel destroyed the record which he had kept for so many years of the slaves that had taken refuge with him. This record was contained in about forty pages of his day-book, and these he cut out and burned. How would they now be prized had they not thus been lost!

Samuel Wilson saw, with the prophetic eye of faith and hope, what he did not live to behold in the flesh,—the abolition of slavery. His mortal remains repose beside the Quaker meeting-house where he so long ministered as an elder. No monumental stone marks that humble resting-place; but these simple lines of mine, that portray a character so rare, may serve for an affectionate memorial.

COUSIN JEMIMA.

“Well, Phebe, I guess thee did not expect me this afternoon. Don’t get up. I will just lay my bonnet in the bedroom myself. Dinah Paddock told me thy quilt was in; so I came up as soon as I could. Laid out in orange-peel! I always did like orange-peel. Dinah’s was herring-bone; and thine is filled with wool, and plims up, and shows the works, as mother used to say. I’ll help thee roll before I sit down. Now then. Days are long, and we’ll try to do a stroke of work, for thee’s a branch quilter, I’ve heard say.

“Jethro Mitchell stopped to see me this morning. They got home from Ohio last week, and he says that Cousin Jemima Osborne’s very bad with typhoid fever. Poor Jemima! It had been pretty much through the family, and after nursing the rest, she was taken down. I almost know she has no one fit to take care of her,—only Samuel and the three boys, and maybe some hired girl that has all the housework to do. The neighbors will be very kind, to be sure, sitting up nights; but there’s been so much sickness in that country lately.

“Jemima was Uncle Brown Coffin’s daughter, thee knows, who used to live down at Sandwich, on the Cape, when thee and I were girls. She always came to Nantucket to Quarterly Meeting with Uncle Brown and Aunt Judith; and folks used to say she wasn’t a bit of a coof, if she was born on the Cape. When Samuel and she were married, they asked me and Gorham Hussey to stand up with them. Jemima looked very pretty in her lavender silk and round rosy cheeks. When meeting was over, she whispered to me that there was a wasp or bee under her neck-handkerchief that had stung her while she was saying the ceremony. But I don’t think anybody perceived it, she was so quiet. Poor dear! I seem to see her now on a sick-bed and a rolling pillow.

“After my Edward died, I was so much alone that I thought I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I must just get up and go to Ohio, as Samuel and ’Mima had often asked me to. I stopped on the way at Mary Cooper’s at Beaver, and Mary’s son was joking a little about Cousin Samuel’s farming, and said he didn’t quite remember whether it was two or three fences that they had to climb going from the house to the barn-yard. I told him that Samuel wasn’t brought up to farming; he bought land when he moved out West.

“I found Jemima a good deal altered, now that she had a grown family; but we just began where we left off,—the same friendliness and kindness. When I was in Ohio was just when the English Friends, Jonathan and Hannah Purley, were in the country. We met them at Marlborough Quarterly Meeting. We were all together at William Smith’s house,—one of the neatest of places,—everything like waxwork, with three such daughters at home. How they worked to entertain Friends!

“First-day a great many world’s people were at meeting on account of the strange Friends. Meeting was very full,—nearly as many out in the yard as in the house. Very weighty remarks were made by Jonathan and Hannah. She spoke to my own state:—‘Leave thy widows and let thy fatherless children trust in Me.’ The meeting was disturbed some by the young babies; but we could hardly expect the mothers to stay away.

“Second-day was Quarterly Meeting. Of course the English Friends, being at William Smith’s, drew a great many others. We had forty to dinner. One of William’s daughters stayed in the kitchen, one waited on the table, and one sat down midway, where she could pass everything and wait on the Friends. It was in the Eighth Month, and we had a bountiful table of all the good things of that time of year,—vegetables and fruit too. William was a nurseryman.

“There was a little disturbance at breakfast, William’s son—a rather wild young man—making the young people laugh. We had fish,—mackerel, and little fresh fish out of the mill-dam. I sat near the middle, and heard Friend Smith at one end say to each, ‘Will thee have some of the mackerel, or some of these little dam-fish?’ Then young William, at the other end, spoke low to his friends: ‘Will thee have some of the mackerel, or some of these dam little fish?’ But most of the young women kept pretty serious countenances. When Quarterly Meeting was over, the English Friends went out to Indiana, visiting meetings and Friends’ families, and I went back with Cousin Samuel’s.

“I was dreadfully disappointed once. One evening Samuel and ’Mima and the rest of us were sitting round the table, and Samuel put his hand into his coat-pocket and drew out the paper and two or three letters. As he read, I noticed that one of the letters had not been opened, and caught sight of my name—Priscilla Gardner; so I put out my hand and took it. It was from sister Mary,—just as James and she were starting for California. She told me that they should stay in Pittsburg over one night, and she hoped I should be able to meet them there and bid them a long farewell. But when I looked again at the date of the letter, and glanced at the paper that Samuel was reading, I found that my letter was ten days old. The time had gone by. Oh, dear! I walked out into the kitchen and stood by the stove, in the dark, and cried. Some one came up behind me. Of course it was Jemima. She kissed me, and waited for me to speak. I gave her the letter, and in about ten minutes I felt able to go back to the sitting-room. When I sat down, Samuel said, ‘’Mima tells me, Priscilla, that thee is very much disappointed about thy letter. I had on this coat when I went to the post-office a week ago, and I didn’t put it on again till to-day. I hope thee’ll excuse me. Thomas, my son, will thee bring us some red-streaks? I feel as if I could eat a few apples.’

“I felt sorrowful for some time about my sister; but my mind was diverted when we got word that the English Friends were coming to our Monthly Meeting on their way back from Indiana; and as we lived very near the meeting-house, of course they would be at Samuel’s. As the time came near, Jemima and I were a good deal interested to have things nice. They were going to be at William Smith’s again, where everything was so neat, and I felt very anxious to make everything in-doors, at Jemima’s, as nice as we could.

“In the sitting-room was one empty corner, where the great rocking-chair ought to stand. It was broken, and put away in the bedroom. I wanted very much to have it mended; but it seemed as if we could not get it to Salem. One time the load would be too large, another the chair would be forgotten. At last one day it was put in the back of the covered wagon, and fairly started. When Samuel got home it was rather late in the evening, and I heard him say to ’Mima, ‘Only think of my forgetting thy large chair. I was late starting from home, thee knows; and when I got to Salem there was a good deal of talk about the war; and when I got halfway home I remembered the big chair in the back of the wagon. It can go in next week.’ We did send it again, but it did not get home before Monthly Meeting.

“Jemima had a very neat home-made carpet on the sitting-room: she had a great taste for carpets. As there had been some yards left, she let me cover the front entry too, and her youngest son Edward, a nice lad, helped me put it down. A little colored girl, near by, rubbed up the brass andirons for us, and Edward built up a pile of wood ready to kindle the fire when it was wanted. A good many panes of glass had been broken, and as we had just had an equinoctial storm, some old coats, and so on, had been stuffed in at several places; but we managed to get most of the glass put in before Monthly Meeting.

“When we had done all we could to the house, of course we began to think of the cooking. Jemima said, ‘I sha’n’t be able to get Mary Pearson to come and cook: she is nursing. I wonder whether I hadn’t better heat the oven on meeting-day. I can get the dinner in before I go; and then between meetings I can run over and see to it. I shall hardly be missed. I can slip in at the side-door of the meeting-house before Mary Ann has done reading the Minutes.’—‘Then thee will heat the oven?’ said I.—‘I reckon,’ she said; ‘but it is only a mud oven. Samuel has been talking for a good while about having a brick oven. This one is not very safe.’—‘Suppose I make a little sponge-cake, and put it in too,’ said I. ‘I’ll send for some sugar, if thee is willing. Polly Evans used to call me a dabster at sponge-cake.’

“Jemima was willing, and we began to get ready to go to the store. Edward and the little colored girl hunted the barn and the straw-shed, and brought in a quantity of eggs. All could not be sent, because we needed some at home, and some had been set on, and some had lain too long. Then Jemima sent to the garret for brooms and rags, and spared a little butter too for the store,—not much, to be sure, when Monthly Meeting was coming. I thought I might as well ride over with Edward; and when we had got coffee, and tea, and so on, and were just starting home, I caught sight of some lemons. I bought a few, and when I got home asked Jemima if she would not like some lemon-puddings. ‘Thy apple-pies and rice-puddings are nice, dear,’ I said; ‘but Hannah Purley and Jonathan are such strangers, we might go a little out of the common way.’ Jemima smiled at my being so anxious, but agreed, as she generally did.

“Fourth-day morning we were up very early. Jemima was going to roast some fowls and a loin of veal. Edward and the little colored girl helped me to beat eggs, grate lemons, and roll sugar; and everything was ready for the oven before the Friends came in from a distance, who always stopped before meeting to get a cup of tea.

“We had a nice little table for them, of course,—dried beef, preserves, and so on; and one woman Friend, a single woman, asked for a warm flat-iron to press out her cap and handkerchief. At last we were ready to start. Jemima had set everything into the oven, which stood out in the yard. She put the meats back, and the cakes and puddings near the door, where it was not so hot. ‘The door isn’t very safe,’ said she, ‘and I propped a stick against it to keep it up. Don’t let the dog knock it down, Susan, while we are gone.’

“The day was beautiful; all signs of the storm over, except the roads a little muddy; and as we stepped over to the meeting-house Jemima whispered, ‘I am glad I told Susan to set both tables. I think we shall have a good many to dinner. I wanted cole-slaw, like Pennsylvania folks, but the cows broke in last night and ate all the solid cabbage.’ She did not talk of these things generally going into meeting; but our minds were very full.

“First meeting was rather long, for several Friends spoke besides the strangers. When it broke, Jemima stepped out, and I quietly followed her. We walked over to the house, and round into the side-yard, going toward the oven. But just as we had got into the yard we saw the old sow. She had broken out of the barn-yard, and had been wallowing in a pond of brown water near the fence. Now she had knocked down Jemima’s stick, and as the door fell I guess she smelt our good things, for she had her fore-feet upon the oven floor. We ran and screamed, but she did not turn. She made a jump up to the oven, over my cakes and puddings, the veal and chickens, and carried the oven roof off with her. Oh, dear! oh, dear! poor Jemima! I could laugh too, if it wasn’t so dreadful.”

_Reader._—And what did they do then?

_Writer._—The best that they could. I do wonder at Jemima, poor thing, to undertake so much on Monthly Meeting day.

THE MINERS OF SCRANTON.

A few years ago I visited Hyde Park,—a mining division of the youthful city of Scranton. Besides boarding in the family of an operative, I talked with citizens, from miners to ministers, and took notes of these conversations. Upon the information thus obtained the following article is founded.

There hangs in our house a large map of the State of Pennsylvania of the year 1851. Scranton is not marked upon it. A little village named Providence is, indeed, to be found, which is now an inconsiderable part of consolidated Scranton. Nine years after the date of this map, by the census of 1860, the population of Scranton is given at nine thousand, and in 1870 at thirty-five thousand. This very rapid increase was caused by the working of the immense coal-beds which underlie the narrow valley of the Lackawanna, in which the city is situated.

Forty-five per cent. of the population is given as foreign, or fifteen thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven. The miners are almost all of foreign birth, the Irish being the most numerous, next the Welsh, then the Germans, and lastly the English and Scotch. Among the Welsh-speaking population there are, however, natives of Monmouthshire, not now a portion of Wales, but belonging to England. Among the miners there are some Pennsylvania Germans. With the exception of these, there is scarcely to be found at Scranton a native of this country working underground, either as miner or laborer.

Gaelic is extensively spoken by the Irish here, there being women, I am told, newly come over, who do not speak English. The Welsh language is more extensively employed. There are seven churches of which the services are in that language, a Welsh newspaper, and a literary or scientific society.[166] But as the Pennsylvania German employs many English words in speaking “Dutch,” so does the Welshman introduce many into his vernacular, as “all right,” “exactly,” “you know,” “twenty per cent.,” “mortgage,” “explosion,” “universe.” In speaking English, those from South Wales treat the letter _h_ as the English do, and speak of Mr. ’Iggins, and of picking ’uckleberries, or say, “That’s a hodd name,” “I have a hell kitchen to my house.” The Welshman frequently emphasizes a statement, as, “Yes, sure,” “Yes indeed, man.” He says, “Dear to goodness!” “I ’on’t do it, whatever,” etc., etc.

The Welsh have been accused of bearing malice, and of being clannish, or of “keeping together.” “I think,” says a Scotchman, “that that is why they keep up the Welsh language.” For themselves they claim that they were never subjugated. They are Republicans almost to a man, and equally Protestant; lovers of liberty, stubborn and enduring, not fickle. The Welsh churches at Scranton belong to the three following sects: Independent or Congregational, Baptist, and Calvinistic Methodist.

The Welshman is an experienced miner in his own rugged country. We are informed that the coal-field of Glamorganshire, in Wales, is one of the most important mineral districts in the world, and that in this small district more iron is manufactured than in all the United States. The Welsh here work more exclusively at mining than do the Irish and Germans. The Welshman is the miner, who blasts and takes down the coal, while the Irishman loads it upon the cars, a certain number of car-loads forming his daily task.