A concern came upon him to go on foot in his preaching journeys: at first apparently that he might, like his Master, appear in the form of a servant; later, that he might have no complicity in the miseries suffered by the little post-boys employed in the chaises. Nothing is clearer to the reader of the _Journal_ than the rapid increase of this holy or foolish sensitiveness. Seeking not to trade with oppressors, he refuses to gratify his palate with sugars prepared by the slave labour: under inward pressure to visit the West Indies, he has anxious scruples about taking passage on a ship owned by the West India Company, but decides that he may do so if he pays a sum sufficiently larger than that demanded to compensate the labour involved on another basis than that of slavery. At last--and here the crisis of his experience draws near--he feels himself inwardly bound to go to England; and decides that it is his duty to travel in the steerage, because forsooth the adornments of the cabin have cost vain and degrading labour. The horrors of a steerage passage in those days are well known to us from other sources; and among our visions of the martyrs of Truth we may well preserve the picture of John Woolman, his patient Quaker face upturned at midnight through the hatch, panting for a breath of air. Through the studied quiet of the narrative, the shrinking of the flesh can plainly be felt. The whole story at this point palpitates with a solemn pain and an exceeding peace. As usual, the sufferings of others form the larger part of his pain: he is wracked with sympathy for the sailors, and moved to a grieved indignant study of their temptations and afflictions which is good reading still to-day. Arrived in England, his experience deepens. As usual, he writes without emphasis: but his distress and tenderness are in every line. In a passage that reads as if penned by Engels or Rowntree, he makes careful pitying note of the scale of wages and cost of living, and cries out sharply, "Oh, may the wealthy consider the poor! May those who have plenty lay these things to heart!" We perceive that he is realising with increasing perplexity the extraordinary intricacy with which "the spirit of oppression" is entwined with the most innocent and necessary pursuits. "Silence as to every motion proceeding from the love of money and an humble waiting upon God to know his will concerning us appear necessary: 'He alone is able' so to direct us in our outward employments that pure universal love may shine forth in our proceedings." In "bowedness of spirit" he proceeds northward, and it is evident that the body is growing weaker as he makes his silent laborious way on foot, bearing from town to town the message of his Lord. He is offered to drink when thirsty, in silver vessels, and declines, "telling his case with weeping." Disgusted, "being but weakly," with "the scent arising from that filth which more or less infects the air of all closely