with white silk strings. The younger branches of Quakerdom seemed
more conventional than their ancestors in general dress. There was a
slight dash of antiquity in their style; but their hats and bonnets,
their coats and shawls had evidently been made for ornament as well
as use. Originally Quakers were peculiarly stringent in respect to
the plainness of their clothes; what they wore was always good,
always made out of something which could not be beaten for its
excellence of quality; but it was always simple, always out of the
line of shoddy and bespanglement. But Quakerism is neither
immaculate nor invincible; time is changing its simplicity, its
quaint old fashioned solidity of dress; "civilisation" is quietly
eating away its rigidity; and the day is coming when Quakerism will
don the same suit as the rest of the world. For the first ten
minutes we were in the chapel silence was not to us so much of a
singularity; but when the Town Hall clock struck seven, when the
machinery in the dim steeple of Trinity Church, which adjoins, gave
a slow confirmation of it, and when all the little clocks in the
neighbouring houses--for you could hear them on account of the
general silence--chirped out sharply the same thing, one began to
feel dubious and mystified. But the Quakers took all quietly, and
even the children present sat still. The chime of another hour
quarter came in due order; still there was no sign of action. Two
minutes afterwards, an elderly gentleman, whose eyes had been kept
close during the greater part of the time which had passed, suddenly
leaned forward; the "congregation" followed his example in a crack,
and for ten minutes they prayed, the elderly gentleman leading the
way in a rather high-keyed voice, which he singularly modulated. But
there was not much of "the old Foxian orgasm" manifested by him; he
was serene, did not shake, was not agonised. He finished as he began
without any warning; the general assemblage was seated in a second;