. Penn interested himself in the improvement of their
condition. He was also concerned in the progress of the prison reforms
which he had proposed in the original establishment of the colony. He
employed a watchman to cry the news, the weather, and the time of day in
the Philadelphia streets. Regarding the Constitution, about which there
had been so much contention, he addressed the council and the assembly
in terms of characteristic friendliness. "Friends," he said, "if in the
Constitution by charter there be anything that jars, alter it. If you
want a law for this or that, prepare it." He advised them, however, not
to trifle with government, and wished there were no need to have any
government at all. In general, he said, the fewer laws, the better. The
result was a new Constitution. It provided that the council should be
appointed by the governor, and that the assembly should have the right
to originate laws. It was more simple and workable than the previous
legislation, and lasted until the Revolution.

Meanwhile, Penn was journeying about the country in his old way,
preaching. At Merion, a small boy of the family where he was
entertained, being much impressed with the great man's looks and speech,
peeped through the latchet-hole of his chamber door, and both saw and
heard him at his prayers. Near Haverford, a small girl, walking along
the country road, was overtaken by the governor, who took her up behind
him on his horse, and so carried her on her way, her bare feet dangling
by the horse's side.

Clarkson, the chief of the biographers of Penn, who collected these and
other incidents, gives us a glimpse of him as he appeared at this time
at Quaker meetings. "He was of such humility that he used generally to
sit at the lowest end of the space allotted to ministers, always taking
care to place above himself poor ministers, and those who appeared to
him to be peculiarly gifted." He liked to encourage young men to speak.
When he himself spoke, it was in the simplest words, easy to be
understood, and with many homely illustrations. At the same time, on
state occasions, as the proprietor of Pennsylvania and representative of
the sovereign, he used some ceremony, marching through the Philadelphia
streets to the opening of the assembly with a mace-bearer before him,
and having an officer standing at his gate on audience days, with a long
staff tipped with silver. Acquainted with affairs, and with a knowledge
of the relati