I recently attended a Friends’ meeting at the quaint, roomy church on Quaker Hill. The Narragansett Bay rolled in the distance as clear and blue as when George Fox himself must have beheld it in 1671, or more than two hundred years ago. The Hill is still the Mecca of the Societies of Friends, and may be found on the Old Colony Railroad near Portsmouth, R. I., some eight miles from Newport, and a few miles from the Barton-Prescott house, of historic fame. [Illustration: CORNER OF MOSQUE, IN CAIRO STREET.] The island was Aquidneck when George Fox came there, “a voice crying in the wilderness of the world,” and when Bishop Berkeley became prophetic at Newport, and voiced his inspiration in the immortal line, “Westward the course of empire takes its way.” There are few spots on the earth more serene and lovely than Quaker Hill. There is an ethereal beauty over the blue waterways and bountiful farms, a “Gulf Stream influence” it is called, that seems almost spiritual, and we do not wonder that the good old Quaker spirit should have found its sympathetic atmosphere here. After the long past, the Gospel of the Inner Light and universal Love is still preached on the self-same serene hill of Portsmouth looking over to Mount Hope,—the ancient burying-ground of the Indian race,—the Narragansett Bay, and the sinking sails of the far sea. It is worth a pilgrimage to spend a Sabbath on Quaker Hill. The old-time Newport Quakers did not keep holidays, but Thanksgiving was always a benevolent day on the thrifty Quaker farms around the transfigured hill. The mention of the day recalls tables of luxuries that, unhappily, are no more seen. Those were the days of apple dumplings made of Rhode Island greenings, which Rhode Island mythology claims to have come from the original Garden of Eden; of pandowdy in comparison with which the modern apple pie merits little commendation; of No Cake, rightly named, for it consisted of parched corn so deftly cooked that it floated white on milk; of plum porridge, hot and cold; of hasty puddings with toothsome sauces; of bannocks; of whit-pot; of all kinds of game,—wild geese, teal, partridges, and quail; of pound-cake that induced pipes and fireside slumbers and dreams such as never haunted the self-denying soul of George Fox. The old Quakers of Portsmouth were good livers, but they shared all they had with every one. Blessed are the graves with their mossy stones around the queer church on old Quaker Hill! The precisianers here lived quiet lives, but their principles of soul-liberty emancipated the world. The little square panes in the gray meeting-house windows, to a student of life, are more than all the rose hues of the lights of Cologne Cathedral. It is the soul of things that is great,—and great souls held their visions here.