“George Meschter.
“William Schultz.
“Jacob Meschter.
“Per Dan. S. Shultz.
“December 17th, 1875. Colebrookdale, Penna.”
A FRIEND.
About twenty miles from the line that divides Maryland and Pennsylvania, there stands, in the latter State, a retired farm-house, which was erected more than fifty years ago by Samuel Wilson, a Quaker of Quakers.
His was a character so rare in its quaintness and its nobility, that it might serve as a theme for a pen more practised and more skilful than the one that now essays to portray it.
Samuel Wilson was by nature romantic. When comparatively young, he made a pedestrian tour to the Falls of Niagara, stopping upon his return journey, and hiring with a farmer to recruit his exhausted funds; and when he had passed his grand climacteric, the enthusiasm of his friendship for the young, fair, and virtuous, still showed the poetic side of his character.
Veneration induced him to cherish the relics of his ancestry,—not only the genealogical tree, which traced the Wilsons back to the time of William Penn, and the marriage certificates of his father and grandfather, according to the regular order of the Society of Friends; but such more humble and familiar heirlooms as the tall eight-day clock, and the high bookcase upon a desk and chest of drawers, that had been his father’s, as well as the strong kitchen-chairs and extremely heavy fire-irons of his grandfather.
To this day there stands beside the Wilson farm-house a stone taken from one of the buildings erected by Samuel’s father, and preserved as an heirloom. Upon it the great-grandchildren read nearly the following inscription:
“James Wilson, ejus manus scripsit. [His hand wrote.] Deborah Wilson, 5 mo. 23d, 1757.”