experience?

I owe no grudge to the Shakers. I like their apple sauce, (they
ask a thrifty price for it,) and have faith in the genuineness and
the generation, under favorable conditions, of their garden seeds;
but I object to their style of life and piety, and to every thing
outside of Shakerdom which looks like it. I object to this whole
idea, (and the Shakers have not monopolized it,) that God takes
delight in the voluntary personal mortification of His children,
and that He approves of their going about, sad-faced and
straight-laced, studiously avoiding all temptation to enjoy
themselves.

I have seen a deacon in the pride of his deep humility. He combed
his hair straight, and looked studiously after the main chance;
and while he looked, he employed himself in setting a good
example. His dress was rigidly plain, and his wife was not
indulged in the vanities of millinery and mantua-making. He never
joked. He did not know what a joke was, any further than to know
that it was a sin. He carried a Sunday face through the week. He
did not mingle in the happy social parties of his neighborhood. He
was a deacon. He starved his social nature because he was a
deacon. He refrained from all participation in a free and generous
life because he was a deacon. He made his children hate Sunday
because he was a deacon. He so brought them up that they learned
to consider themselves unfortunate in being the children of a
deacon. They were pitied by other children because they were the
children of a deacon. His wife was pitied by other women because
she was the wife of a deacon. Nobody loved him. If he came into a
circle where men were laughing or telling stories, they always