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If the spirit of
curiosity, the yearning for an active, joyous grasp of life,
sometimes pierced through this placid temper, and stirred the blood
of the adolescent members, they were persuaded by grave voices, of
almost prophetic authority, to turn their hearts towards "the
Stillness and the Quietness."
It was the pleasant custom of the community to arrive at the
meeting-house some fifteen or twenty minutes before the usual time
of meeting, and exchange quiet and kindly greetings before taking
their places on the plain benches inside. As most of the families
had lived during the week on the solitude of their farms, they
liked to see their neighbors' faces, and resolve, as it were,
their sense of isolation into the common atmosphere, before
yielding to the assumed abstraction of their worship. In this
preliminary meeting, also, the sexes were divided, but rather from
habit than any prescribed rule. They were already in the vestibule
of the sanctuary; their voices were subdued and their manner
touched with a kind of reverence.


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