After the burning of the Springfield church, the pastor, Rev. Jacob Vanarsdal, gathered his people in the barn of the parsonage. Later the building was ceiled and galleries were built. For ten years the barn was the home of the congregation, but in 1791 the building was erected which is in use to-day. FOUR: RAMBLES ABOUT THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE _In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware's waters, Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn the apostle, Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he founded. There all the air is balm, and the peach is the emblem of beauty, And the streets still re-echo the names of the trees of the forest, As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they molested. There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed, an exile, Finding among the children of Penn a home and a country. There old Rene Leblanc had died; and when he departed, Saw at his side only one of all his hundred descendants. Something at least there was in the friendly streets of the city, Something that spake to her heart, and made her no longer a stranger; And her ear was pleased with the Thee and Thou of the Quakers, For it recalled the past, the old Acadian country, Where all men were equal, and all were brothers and sisters._ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. FOUR: RAMBLES ABOUT THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE [Illustration: LETITIA PENN HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA _Photo by Ph. B. Wallace_ See page 145] XXXI THE LETITIA PENN HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA WILLIAM PENN'S FIRST AMERICAN HOME When William Penn, English Quaker, met Guli Springett, he fell in love with her at once. In 1672 they were married. Ten years later when, as Proprietor of Pennsylvania, Penn was about to sail in the _Welcome_ for America, he wrote a letter of which the following is a portion: "My dear wife and children, my love, which neither sea, nor land, nor death itself, can extinguish or lessen toward you, most tenderly visits you with eternal embraces and will abide with you for ever.... My dear wife, remember thou wast the love of my youth and the joy of my life, the most beloved as well as the most worthy of all my earthly comfort, and the reason of that love were more thy inward than thy outward excellencies, which were yet many. God knows, and thou knowest it, that it was a match of Providence's making, and God's image in us both was the first thing and the most amiable and engaging ornament in our eyes. Now I am to leave thee, and that without knowing whether I shall ever see thee more in this world."