"By a pois'nous fleshly nature, This dark world has long been led; There can be no passion greater-- This must be the serpent's head: On our coast he would be cruising, If by truth he were not bound: But his head has had a bruising, And he's got a deadly wound. "And his wounds cannot be healed, Light and truth do now forbid, Since the Gospel has revealed Where his filthy head was hid: With a fig-leaf it was cover'd, Till we brought his deeds to light; By his works he is discover'd, And his head is plain in sight." It should be said that Ann Lee had married previously to these manifestations, her husband being Abraham Stanley, like her father, a blacksmith. By him she had four children, all of whom died in infancy. It is related that she showed from girlhood a decided repugnance to the married state, and married only on the long-continued and urgent persuasion of her friends; and after 1770 she seems to have returned to her parents. She and her followers were frequently abused and persecuted; and in 1773 "she was by a direct revelation instructed to repair to America;" and it is quaintly added that "permission was given for all those of the society who were able, and who felt any special impressions on their own minds so to do, to accompany her." [Footnote: "Shakers' Compendium."] She had announced, says the same authority, that "the second Christian Church would be established in America; that the colonies would gain their independence; and that liberty of conscience would be secured to all people, whereby they would be able to worship God without hinderance or molestation." Accordingly Ann Lee embarked at Liverpool in May, 1774, eight persons accompanying her, six men and two women, among them her husband and a brother and niece. They landed in New York in August; and, after some difficulties and hardships on account of poverty, finally settled in what appears to have been then a wilderness, "the woods of Watervliet, near Niskeyuna, about seven miles northwest of Albany." In the mean time Ann Lee had supported herself by washing and ironing in New York, and her husband had misconducted himself so grossly toward her that they finally separated, he going off with another woman. At Niskeyuna, Ann Lee and her companions busied themselves in clearing land and providing for their subsistence. They lived in the woods, and Ann was their leader and preacher. She foretold to them that the time was near when they should see a large accession to their numbers; but they had so long to wait that their hearts sometimes failed them. They settled at Watervliet in September, 1775, and it was not until 1780 that, by a curious chance, their doctrines were at last brought to the knowledge of persons inclined to receive them.