We often find left,
On the same china dish,
Meat, apple-sauce, pickle,
Brown bread and minc'd fish;
Another's replenish'd
With butter and cheese;
With pie, cake, and toast,
Perhaps, added to these.
Now if any virtue
In this can be shown,
By peasant, by lawyer,
Or king on the throne,
We freely will forfeit
Whatever we've said,
And call it a virtue
To waste meat and bread.
Let none be offended
At what we here say;
We candidly ask you,
Is that the best way?
If not—lay such customs
And fashions aside,
And take this Monitor
Henceforth for your guide.
[VISITORS' EATING-ROOM, SHAKER VILLAGE.]
Since these chapters were written, Hervey Elkins's pamphlet, "Fifteen Years in the Senior Order of the Shakers," printed at Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1853, has come into my hands. Elkins gives some details out of his own experience of Shaker life which I believe to be generally correct, and which I quote here, as filling up some parts of the picture I have tried to give of the Shaker polity and life:
"The spiritual orders, laws, and statutes, never to be revoked, are in substance as follows: None are admitted within the walls of Zion, as they denominate their religious sphere, but by a confession to one or more incarnate witnesses of every debasing and immoral act perpetrated by the confessor within his remembrance; also every act which, though the laws of men may sanction, may be deemed sinful in the view of that new and sublimer divinity which he has adopted. The time, the place, the motive which produced and pervaded the act, the circumstances which aggravated the case, are all to be disclosed. No stone is to be left unturned—no filth is suffered to remain. The temple of God, or the soul, must be carefully swept and garnished, before the new man can enter it and there make his abode. (Christ, or the Divine Intelligence which emanated from God the Father, transforms the soul into the new man spoken of in the Scriptures.)
"Those who have committed deeds cognizable by the laws of the land, shall never be admitted, until those laws have dealt with their transgressions and acquitted them.
"Those who have in any way morally wronged a fellow-creature, shall make restitution to the satisfaction of the person injured.
"Wives who have unbelieving husbands must not be admitted without their husbands' consent, or until they are lawfully released from the marriage contract, and vice versa. They may confess their sins, but cannot enter the sacred compact.
"All children admitted shall be bound by legal indentures, and shall, if refractory, be returned to their parents.