American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Sunday schools -- United States -- Periodicals
"Perhaps it is so."
NOTE TO ALL THE PANSIES.--In my composition about the
pin, I mentioned several interesting things about the
early history of his family, etc., which he probably
didn't know, or he would have told me. If you would
like to know about them, just hunt up the word "pin" in
the encyclopædia, and it will tell you.
PARANETE.
OUR ALPHABET OF GREAT MEN.
P.--PENN, WILLIAM.
THE other day I was looking at a map of Philadelphia, and at once my
thoughts went back to my schooldays and the primary geography in which
occurred the question, "What can you say of Philadelphia?" And the
answer, "It is regularly laid out, the streets crossing each other at
right angles like the lines on a checker-board." And again, "What is
Philadelphia sometimes called?" Answer, "The City of Brotherly Love."
And now I wish I could set before you the calm, sweet, yet strong face
of the man who founded and named this city, who truly desired it to be
a city of love.
William Penn was a native of London. He was born nearly a quarter of a
century after the Pilgrims landed upon Plymouth Rock; he belonged to a
good family, his father being Admiral Sir William Penn of the British
Navy. It appears that the son was of a religious turn of mind, and when
he was a boy of twelve years he believed himself to have been specially
called to a life of holiness. He was very carefully educated, but he
offended his father by joining the Quakers; indeed, it seems that
several times in the course of his life his father became very much
displeased with him, but a reconciliation always followed, and at last
the Admiral left all his estate to the son who had been such a trial
to him. While a student at the University, Penn and his Quaker friends
rebelled against the authority of the college and was expelled. The
occasion of the rebellion was in the matter of wearing surplices and
of uncovering the head in the presence of superiors. You know that the
Quakers always keep their hats on, thinking it wrong to show to man the
honor which they consider belongs only to God. And this reminds me to
tell you that in the _Wide Awake_ for February, I think, Mr. Brooks has
told a pretty story of William Penn and St. Valentine's Day, in which
he mentions this refusal to uncover in the presence of the king even,
as one cause of trouble between the father and son.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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