Friend Mitchenor had thus gradually ripened to his sixtieth year in
an atmosphere of life utterly placid and serene, and looked
forward with confidence to the final change, as a translation into
a deeper calm, a serener quiet, a prosperous eternity of mild
voices, subdued colors, and suppressed emotions.
He was returning home, in his own old-fashioned "chair," with its
heavy square canopy and huge curved springs, from the Yearly
Meeting of the Hicksite Friends, in Philadelphia. The large bay
farm-horse, slow and grave in his demeanor, wore his plain harness
with an air which made him seem, among his fellow-horses, the
counterpart of his master among men. He would no more have thought
of kicking than the latter would of swearing a huge oath. Even
now, when the top of the hill was gained, and he knew that he was
within a mile of the stable which had been his home since colthood,
he showed no undue haste or impatience, but waited quietly, until
Friend Mitchenor, by a well-known jerk of the lines, gave him the
signal to go on.
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