by her father alone for some days with this cousin, the influence of the
visit was very powerful on her. "She was exactly the person to attract
the young; she possessed singular beauty, and elegance of manner. She
was of the old school; her costume partook of this, and her long
retention of the black hood gave much character to her appearance. She
had early renounced the world and its fascinations; left Bath, where her
mother and sister Christiana Gurney resided; became eventually a
minister among Friends; and found a congenial retreat for many years at
Colebrook Dale."

The travelling party went on to make a tour in Wales and to attend the
gathering of Friends at the Welsh half-yearly meeting. Most of the
Colebrook Dale Friends were present, and further converse with Priscilla
Gurney induced her niece to resolve openly to conform to Quaker customs,
though at what precise time she became professedly a Friend we are not
told. As to the costume, she was very slow in adopting it--not till some
time after returning to Norwich.

In this early Welsh journey a singular prediction was given in an
address by an aged Friend, Deborah Darby, who said of her that "she
would be a light to the blind, speech to the dumb, and feet to the
lame." "Can it be? She seems as if she thought I was to be a minister of
Christ. Can I ever be one?" asks Elizabeth Gurney in her Journal.




V.

THE LAST YEAR AT HOME.