quaint title of one of Fox's books which my venerable friend had quoted to me--viz., "A Battle-door for Teachers and Professors to learn Plural and Singular. _You_ to _Many_, and _Thou_ to _One_; Singular, One, _Thou_; Plural, Many, _You_." While so meditating, my cab deposited me at the door of a decidedly "downy" house, at the West End, where my prospective friend was practising in I will not mention which of the learned professions. Both the suburban cottage of the mother and the London menage of the son assured me that they had thriven on Quakerism; and it was only then I recollected that a poor Quaker was as rare a personage as an infantile member of the Society. The young man--who neither in dress, discourse, nor manner differed from an ordinary English gentleman--smiled as he read his mother's lines, and, with a decorous apology for disturbing the impressions which her discourse might have left upon me, took precisely the view which had been latent in my own mind as to the cause of the Society's decay. Thoroughly at one with them still on the doctrine of the illuminating power of the Spirit in the individual conscience, he treated the archaic dress, the obsolete phraseology, the obstinate opposition to many innocent customs of the age, simply as anachronisms. He pointed with pride to the fact that our greatest living orator was a member of the Society; and claimed for the underlying principle of Quakerism--namely, the superiority of a conscience void of offence over written scripture or formal ceremony--the character of being in essence the _broadest_ creed of Christendom. Injudicious retention of customs which had grown meaningless had, he felt sure, brought down upon the body that most fatal of all influences--contempt. "You see it in your own Church," he said. "There is a school which, by reviving obsolete doctrines and practices, will end in getting the Church of England disestablished as it is already disintegrated. You see it even in the oldest religion of all--Judaism. You see, I mean, a school growing into prominence and power which discards all the accumulations of ages, and by going back to real antiquity, at once brings the system more into unison with the century, and prevents that contempt attaching to it which will accrue wherever a system sets its face violently against the tone of current society." He thought the Conference quite unnecessary. "There needs no ghost come from the dead to tell us that, Horatio," he said, cheerily. "They will find out that Quakerism is not a proselytizing religion," he added; "which, of course, we knew before. They will point to the fashionable attire, the gold rings, and lofty chignons of our younger sisters as direct defiance of primitive custom. I am unorthodox enough"--and he smiled as he used that word--"to think that the attire is more becoming to my younger sisters, just as the Society's dress is to my dear mother." That young man, and the youthful sisters he told me