Would I could say I were done telling of these Eckerlings, for it seemeth to require as long to get rid of them here in the writing as it did to get them out of our community. About this time a pilgrimage from Ephrata was made by Brother Beissel and Brothers Elimelech and Onesimus and one or two others of the Solitary to the Dunker settlement at Amwell, in our sister province of New Jersey, with whom we had become acquainted about two years prior hereto. The charge of this pilgrimage was in Brother Elimelech, but he was with our Amwell Brethren only a short time when he succeeded in making as much trouble for them as he had already made for us. First, because when he preached he kept on and never knew when to stop so that even though his hearers were used to long sermons the utmost patience could not endure his protracted discourses. Secondly, because of his proposing midnight watches and the like, such as had been fastened on us, so that finally he was dismissed and returned to us in disgrace. But as there is some good in all misfortune so it resulted that out of the strained conditions in the Amwell congregation a number of their brethren, among them Dietrich Fahnestock, Conrad Boldhauser, Johannes Mohr, Bernhard Gitter and several others with their families, came to us and either joined the Solitary or our secular congregation. Hardly had this storm subsided than our Brother Onesimus, thinking no doubt it was his turn, concluded that even though properly baptized and notwithstanding he had taken the vows of celibacy, yet there was nothing to prevent him from re-entering the world and marrying, so he advised the Brotherhood to make a new covenant with the Virgin Mary as the patroness of their Order. As a visible sign of their betrothal to the virgin, Brother Onesimus advised that the Brothers and Sisters all cut the tonsure. Brother Beissel, who always counseled chastity and celibacy, fell into this folly of the Eckerlings just as readily as he had into the former ones and hardly had the prior convened the Brotherhood in the chapter house, where each Brother in turn kneeling down repeated his pledge of celibacy and had his hair cut and his crown shorn, when our leader, not to be outdone by the prior, called together the Spiritual Virgins, in their _Saal_. After reconsecrating the assembled Sisters to the heavenly Bridegroom, Brother Beissel, with the assistance of another Brother, cut the hair of each of the Sisterhood in the manner of the primitive Christian church, after which the crowns of the Sisters were likewise shorn, our superintendent gathering up the tresses and carrying them to Zion where he laid them upon the altar expressing the wish that he might live until the Sisters' heads were gray--and it was further resolved and ordered that the tonsure was to be renewed every three months and in the meantime no one was to put shears to his or her head. Thus was another madness inflicted upon us.