“Did they ever do you any harm?”
“Can’t say they did. Indeed I never saw one in the whole of my life.”
“Then why do you call them bad?”
“Because everybody says they are.”
“Not everybody. I don’t; I have always found them the salt of the earth.”
“Then it is salt that has lost its savour. But perhaps you are one of them?”
“No, I belong to the Church of England.”
“Oh, you do. Then good-night to you. I am a Methodist. I thought at first that you were one of our ministers, and had hoped to hear from you something profitable and conducive to salvation, but—”
“Well, so you shall. Never speak ill of people of whom you know nothing. If that isn’t a saying conducive to salvation, I know not what is. Good evening to you.”
I soon reached the village. Singular enough, the people of the very first house, at which I inquired about the Quakers’ Yard, were entrusted with the care of it. On my expressing a wish to see it, a young woman took down a key, and said that if I would follow her she would show it me. The Quakers’ burying-place is situated on a little peninsula or tongue of land, having a brook on its eastern and northern sides, and on its western the Taf. It is a little oblong yard, with low walls, partly overhung with ivy. The entrance is a porch to the south. The Quakers are no friends to tombstones, and the only visible evidence that this was a place of burial was a single flag-stone, with a half-obliterated inscription, which with some difficulty I deciphered, and was as follows:—