A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of FriendsClarkson, Thomas
Religion
A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends
Clarkson, Thomas
Society of Friends
As the Quakers desire their visitors to be free, and to do as they
please, so they do not fail to do the same themselves, never regarding
such visitors as impediments in the way of their concerns. If they have
any business or engagement out of doors, they say so and go, using no
ceremony, and but few words as an apology. Their visitors, I mean such
as stay for a time in their houses, are left in the interim to amuse
themselves as they please. This is peculiarly agreeable, because their
friends know, when they visit them, that they neither restrain, nor
shackle, nor put them to inconvenience. In fact it may be truly said
that if satisfaction in visiting depends upon a man's own freedom to do
as he likes, to ask and to call for what he wants, to go out and come in
as he pleases; and if it depends also on the knowledge he has, that, in
doing all these things, he puts no person out of his way, there are no
houses, where people will be better pleased with their treatment, than
in those of the Quakers.
This trait in the character of the Quakers is very general. I would not
pretend, however, to call it universal. But it is quite general enough
to be pronounced a feature in their domestic character. I do not mean by
the mention of it, to apologize, in any manner for the ruggedness of
manners of some Quakers. There are undoubtedly solitary families, which
having lived in places, where there have been scarcely any of their own
society with whom to associate, and which, having scarcely mixed with
others of other denominations except in the way of trade, have an
uncourteousness, ingrafted in them as it were by these circumstances,
which no change of situation afterwards has been able to obliterate.
The subjects of conversation among the Quakers differ, like those of
others, but they are not so numerous, neither are they of the same kind,
as those of other people.
The Quaker conversation is cramped or fettered for two reasons, first by
the caution, that prevails among the members of the society relative to
the use of idle words, and secondly by the caution, that prevails among
them, relative to the adapting of their expressions to the truth. Hence
the primitive Quakers were persons of few words.
The subjects also of the Quaker conversation are limited for several
reasons. The Quakers have not the same classical or philosophical
education, as those of other denominations in an equal situation in
life. This circumstance will of course exclude many topics from their
discourse.
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