A Book of Quaker SaintsHodgkin, L. V. (Lucy Violet)
Religion
A Book of Quaker Saints
Hodgkin, L. V. (Lucy Violet)
Society of Friends
Two more days of the 'wonderful fortnight' were passed in the
linen-draper's home at Crosslands before, on the Wednesday forenoon,
John Audland and his guest descended the dales of Westmorland and
climbed the steep, wooded glen that leads to Cammsgill Farm. There, at
the door, with hands outstretched in welcome, stood good John Camm and
his loving wife Mabel. Peeping behind them curiously at the Stranger
was their twelve-year-old son, Tom. At the windows of the farm were to
be seen the faces of the men-servants and maid-servants, for great was
the curiosity to see the Stranger of whom such great tidings had been
told. Among the serving-maids were two sisters, Jane and Dorothy
Waugh. Little did the eager girls imagine that the Stranger whom they
eyed so keenly was to alter the whole course of their lives by his
words that day; that, for both of them, the pleasant, easy, farm life
at Cammsgill was over, and that they were hereafter to go forth to
preach in their turn, to suffer beatings and cruel imprisonments, and
even to cross the seas, in order to publish the same Truth that he had
come to proclaim.
Tom Camm also, boy as he was, was never to forget that eventful
morning. Long years afterwards he remembered every detail of it.
'On the 4th day morning,' he writes, 'John Audland came with George
Fox to the house of John Camm at Cammsgill in Preston Patrick, who
with his wife and familie gladly received G.F.'
And now, while they are 'gladly receiving' their guest and waiting
till it is time to go down the steep hill to Preston Patrick, let us
look back at the farm-house of Cammsgill where they are sitting, and
learn something of its history and that of its owners.
It was to Cammsgill that Farmer John Camm had brought home his bride
on a late day of summer, thirteen years before the eventful year 1652
of which these stories tell. A wise, prosperous man was good John
Camm, one of the most successful 'statesmen' in all the fertile dales
round about. So busy had he been developing his farm, and attending to
the numerous flocks and herds, that were ever increasing under his
skilful management, that time for love-making seemed to have been left
out of his life. But at last, when he was well over forty, he found
the one woman he had been unconsciously needing through all his
prosperous years to make his life round and complete. It was a mellow
day of Indian summer when John and Mabel Camm walked up the winding
road to Cammsgill for the first time as man and wife. But the golden
sunshine that lay on all the burnished riches of the well-filled
farm-yard was dim compared with the inward sunshine that gladdened the
farmer's heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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