the bill."

"Very true," replies the showman; "and I ask pardon of the audience."

Look now at the street, and observe a strange people entering it. Their
garments are torn and disordered, their faces haggard, their figures
emaciated; for they have made their way hither through pathless deserts,
suffering hunger and hardship, with no other shelter thin a hollow tree,
the lair of a wild beast, or an Indian wigwam. Nor, in the most
inhospitable and dangerous of such lodging-places, was there half the
peril that awaits them in this thoroughfare of Christian men, with those
secure dwellings and warm hearths on either side of it, and yonder
meeting-house as the central object of the scene. These wanderers have
received from Heaven a gift that, in all epochs of the world, has brought
with it the penalties of mortal suffering and persecution, scorn, enmity,
and death itself;--a gift that, thus terrible to its possessors, has ever
been most hateful to all other men, since its very existence seems to
threaten the overthrow of whatever else the toilsome ages have built up;
--the gift of a new idea. You can discern it in them, illuminating their
faces--their whole persons, indeed, however earthly and cloddish--with a
light that inevitably shines through, and makes the startled community
aware that these men are not as they themselves are,--not brethren nor
neighbors of their thought. Forthwith, it is as if an earthquake rumbled
through the town, making its vibrations felt at every hearthstone, and
especially causing the spire of the meeting-house to totter. The Quakers
have come. We are in peril! See! they trample upon our wise and well-
established laws in the person of our chief magistrate; for Governor
Endicott is passing, now an aged man, and dignified with long habits of
authority,--and not one of the irreverent vagabonds has moved his bat.
Did you note the ominous frown of the white-bearded Puritan governor, as