Yet if Woolman's problem be social, his solution is individualistic. It is found in a resolute endeavour to clear his own life of any dependence on evil. Among the many experiments on the same lines, none more thorough-going is recorded; he pushed consistency to a farther point than Tolstoi or Thoreau. It is the story of this experiment that he tells us in the _Journal_, with a rare sincerity. See him as a lad, starting out peaceably at his trade of tailor, easily reaching commercial success--for Woolman possessed practical ability,--but "perceiving merchandise to be attended with much cumber," and deciding accordingly not to develop his business. Watch from this time the interaction of two co-operating forces, a craving for personal purity, and a horror of profiting by human pain,--and note that while the first impulse never waned, the second became more and more constraining. The record of his various "concerns" is delightfully human and appealing. He hated to be morally fussy, and the necessity of violating good breeding at the call of conscience caused him acute distress, for he had an ingrained instinct of good manners. Yet though "the exercise was heavy," he bravely took his elders to task on occasion: refused to accept free hospitality from slave-holders, forcing money on them for his entertainment; and, what is still harder, laboured with his friends. "Thou who travels in the work of the ministry, and art made very welcome by thy friends, it is good for thee to dwell deep that thou mayest feel and understand the spirits of people.... I have seen that in the midst of kindness and smooth conduct, to speak close and home to them who entertain us on points that relate to their outward interest, is hard labour, and sometimes when I have felt Truth lead toward it I have found myself disqualified by a superficial friendship.... To see the failings of our friends and think hard of them without opening that which we ought to open, and still carry a face of friendship, this tends to undermine the foundation of true unity." A man, sensitive, humble, and well-bred as Woolman evidently was, who can write thus, is pretty sure to know "deep exercises that are mortifying to the creaturely will." Some of his concerns, as those relating to the payment of taxes and the entertainment of soldiers, were common to the Friends; others are apparently inventions of his own. As time went on they increased and multiplied, all practically springing from the common root, the desire to avoid the oppression of the poor. Greed and the wish for ease came to seem a root of all evil. Travelling among the Indians, he felt the intimate relation of their misfortunes to the hunger of the English race for luxury and land. The use of dyes harmful to the worker forced him to wear undyed garments, even though to his meek distress a passing fashion of white hats made him run the danger of being confounded with the children of this world.