A studious moderation of utterance is the first quality to make itself felt in Woolman's works. To casual or jaded readers who crave the word-embroidery, the heightened note, of the romanticist in style, the result may seem colourless. Here is a lack of adjectives, an entire absence of emphasis, a systematic habit of under-statement that, in the climax of a paragraph or the crisis of an emotion, seems at times almost ludicrous. Yet to the reader of severer taste, this very absence of emphasis, so quaintly sober, so sensitive in its unfaltering reticence, becomes the choicest grace of Woolman's style. As is the style, so is the man. Woolman "studied to be quiet," and his steady self-discipline was rewarded by a scrupulous yet instinctive control over the finest shades of verity in speech and life. In the youthful trouble of deep religious feeling, when he "went to meetings," as he expressively tell us, "in an awful frame of mind," he spoke a few words one day, under "a strong exercise of spirit." "But not keeping close to the divine opening, I said more than was required of me, and being soon sensible of my error, I was afflicted in mind some weeks, without any light or comfort, even to such a degree that I could not take satisfaction in anything." The mistake was not often repeated; for as he writes in memorable words: "As I was thus humbled and disciplined under the Cross, my understanding became more strengthened to distinguish the pure spirit that inwardly moves upon the heart, and taught me to wait in silence, sometimes for many weeks together, till I felt that rise which prepares the creature to stand like a trumpet through which the Lord speaks to His flock." A fine passage towards the end of the _Journal_ shows that the danger of speaking without this "pure spirit" was ever present to him. "Many love to hear eloquent orations, and if there is not a careful attention to the Gift, men who have once laboured in the pure Gospel ministry, growing weary of suffering and ashamed of appearing weak, may kindle a fire, compass themselves about with sparks, and walk in the light, not of Christ who is under suffering, but of that fire which they going from the Gift have kindled; and that in hearers which has gone from the meek suffering state into the worldly wisdom, may be warmed with this fire and speak highly of these labours. In this journey, a labour hath attended my mind that the ministers amongst us may be preserved in the meek, feeling life of truth." No man could so keenly analyse the snare of fluency and popularity, who had not spent a life on guard. The reserve of his writings is a natural consequence. One searches these pages in vain, often controversial though they be, for a single point in which the note is forced or emotion escapes control.