And, in consequence, though slaves were still imported, they were humanely treated. Penn interested himself in the improvement of their condition. He was also concerned in the progress of the prison reforms which he had proposed in the original establishment of the colony. He employed a watchman to cry the news, the weather, and the time of day in the Philadelphia streets. Regarding the Constitution, about which there had been so much contention, he addressed the council and the assembly in terms of characteristic friendliness. "Friends," he said, "if in the Constitution by charter there be anything that jars, alter it. If you want a law for this or that, prepare it." He advised them, however, not to trifle with government, and wished there were no need to have any government at all. In general, he said, the fewer laws, the better. The result was a new Constitution. It provided that the council should be appointed by the governor, and that the assembly should have the right to originate laws. It was more simple and workable than the previous legislation, and lasted until the Revolution. Meanwhile, Penn was journeying about the country in his old way, preaching. At Merion, a small boy of the family where he was entertained, being much impressed with the great man's looks and speech, peeped through the latchet-hole of his chamber door, and both saw and heard him at his prayers. Near Haverford, a small girl, walking along the country road, was overtaken by the governor, who took her up behind him on his horse, and so carried her on her way, her bare feet dangling by the horse's side. Clarkson, the chief of the biographers of Penn, who collected these and other incidents, gives us a glimpse of him as he appeared at this time at Quaker meetings. "He was of such humility that he used generally to sit at the lowest end of the space allotted to ministers, always taking care to place above himself poor ministers, and those who appeared to him to be peculiarly gifted." He liked to encourage young men to speak. When he himself spoke, it was in the simplest words, easy to be understood, and with many homely illustrations. At the same time, on state occasions, as the proprietor of Pennsylvania and representative of the sovereign, he used some ceremony, marching through the Philadelphia streets to the opening of the assembly with a mace-bearer before him, and having an officer standing at his gate on audience days, with a long staff tipped with silver. Acquainted with affairs, and with a knowledge of the relations between government and human nature drawn from a wide experience, he knew the distinction, at which some of his Quaker brethren stumbled, between personal humility and the proper dignity of official station.