She held a fan in one hand, and a blowpipe in the other. Her votaries were of both sexes, old and young, married and single, assenters, dissenters, High Church, Low Church, No Church; Doctors in Physics, and Apothecaries in Metaphysics; dabblers in Logic, Chemistry, Casuistry, Sophistry, Natural and unnatural History, Phrenology, Geology, Conchology, Demonology; in short, all kinds of Colledgy-Knowledgy-Ology, including “Cakeology,” and tea and coffee. Like other Societies, we had our President--a sort of Speaker who never spoke; at least within my experience he never unbosomed himself of anything but a portentous shirt frill. According to the usual order of the entertainment, there was--first, Tea and Small Talk; secondly, an original Essay, which should have been followed, thirdly, by a Discussion, or Great Talk; but nine times in ten, it chanced, or rather mumchanced, that, between those who did not know what to think, and others, who did not know how to deliver what they thought, there ensued a dead silence, so “very dead indeed,” as Apollo Belvi says, that it seemed buried into the bargain. To make this awkward pause more awkward, some misgiving voice, between a whisper and a croak, would stammer out some allusion to a Quaker’s Meeting, answered from right to left by a running titter, the speaker having innocently, or perhaps wilfully forgotten, that one or two friends in drab coats, and as many in slate-coloured gowns, were sitting, thumb-twiddling, in the circle. Not that the Friends contented themselves with playing _dumby_ at our discussions. They often spoke, and very characteristically, to the matter in hand. For instance, their favourite doctrine of non-resistance was once pushed--if Quakers ever push--a little “beyond beyond.” By way of clencher, one fair, meek, sleek Quakeress, in dove colour, gravely told a melodramatical story of a conscientious Friend, who rather than lift even his little finger against a Foe, passively, yea, lamblike, suffered himself to be butchered in bed by an assassin, and died consistently, as he thought, with Fox principles, very like a Goose. As regards my own share in the Essays and Arguments, it misgives me that they no more satisfied our decidedly serious members, than they now propitiate Mr. Rae Wilson. At least, one Society night, in escorting a female Fellow towards her home, she suddenly stopped me, taking advantage perhaps of the awful locality, and its associations, just in front of our chief criminal prison, and looking earnestly in my face, by the light of a Newgate lamp, inquired somewhat abruptly, “Mr. Hood! are you not an Infidel[5]?”