Not one of those who saw it has ever forgotten that strange scene; it is a tradition in that community until this day. They felt, and well they might, those strange people who had dedicated themselves and their children to the divine life, that in this scene their little community had attained the zenith of its spiritual history.
No wonder that from an English statesman this eulogy was once wrung: "By God, sir, we cannot afford to persecute the Quakers! Their religion may be wrong, but the people who cling to an idea are the very people we want. If we must persecute—let us persecute the complacent!"
CHAPTER XXXIV.
FASTING IN THE WILDERNESS
"So great is the good I look for, that every hardship delights me."
—St. Francis.
The period of our country's history in which these characters were formed was one of tremendous moral earnestness. In that struggle in which man pitted himself against primeval forest and aboriginal inhabitant, the strongest types of manhood and womanhood were evolved, and those who conceived the idea of living a righteous life set themselves to its realization with the same energy with which they addressed themselves to the conquest of nature itself. To multitudes of them, this present world took a place that in the fullest sense of the word was secondary to that other world in which they lived by anticipation.
David Corson was only one of many who, to a degree which in these less earnest or at least more materialistic times appears incredible, had determined to trample the world under their feet. He awoke next morning with an unabated purpose and at an early hour set resolutely about its execution. He bade a brave farewell to Pepeeta, exhorted her to seek with him that preparation of heart which alone could fit them for the future, and then with a bag of provisions over his shoulder and an axe in his hand started forth to carry out a plan which he had formed in the night.
At the head of the little valley where Pepeeta had built her gypsy fire, and experienced her great disillusionment, was a piece of timber land belonging to his mother's estate. He determined to make a clearing there and establish a home for himself and Pepeeta.