regular in all their goings forth, that others may see your example of faith and good works, and acknowledge the work of God in your family." To some farmers who had gathered at Ashfield, in Massachusetts, in the winter, to listen to her instructions: "It is now spring of the year, and you have all had the privilege of being taught the way of God; and now you may all go home and be faithful with your hands. Every faithful man will go forth and put up his fences in season, and will plow his ground in season, and put his crops into the ground in season; and such a man may with confidence look for a blessing." These are some of the sayings reported of her. They are not remarkable, except as showing that with her religious enthusiasm she united practical sense, which gave her doubtless a power over the people with whom she came in contact, mostly plain farmers and laborers. [Illustration: THE FIRST SHAKER CHURCH, AT MOUNT LEBANON, NOW A SEED-HOUSE.] Mother Ann was succeeded in her rule over the society, or "Church," as they preferred to call it, by Elder James Whittaker, one of those who had come over with her. He was called Father James; and under his ministry was built, in 1785, "the first house for public worship ever built by the society." He died at Enfield in July, 1787, less than three years after Mother Ann; and was succeeded by Joseph Meacham, an American, a native of Connecticut, in early life a Baptist preacher; and with him was associated Lucy Wright, as "the first leading character in the female line," as the "Summary" quaintly expresses it. She was a native of Pittsfield, in Massachusetts. Joseph Meacham died in 1796, at the age of fifty-four, and it seems that Lucy Wright then succeeded to the entire administration and "lead of the society." She died in 1821, at the age of sixty-one. "During her administration the several societies in the states of Ohio and Kentucky were established, and large accessions were made to the Eastern societies." [Footnote: "Shakers' Compendium."] While Joseph Meacham was elder, and in the period between 1787 and 1792, eleven societies were formed, of which two were in New York, four in Massachusetts, two in New Hampshire, two in Maine, and one in Connecticut.