aring a resemblance to the GREAT STONE FACE.

THE GENTLE BOY

By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

In the course of the year 1656, several of the people called Quakers,
led, as they professed, by the inward movement of the spirit, made their
appearance in New England. Their reputation, as holders of mystic and
pernicious principles, having spread before them, the Puritans early
endeavored to banish, and to prevent the further intrusion of the rising
sect. But the measures by which it was intended to purge the land of
heresy, though more than sufficiently vigorous, were entirely
unsuccessful. The Quakers, esteeming persecution as a divine call to the
post of danger, laid claim to a holy courage, unknown to the Puritans
themselves, who had shunned the cross, by providing for the peaceable
exercise of their religion in a distant wilderness. Though it was the
singular fact, that every nation of the earth rejected the wandering
enthusiasts who practiced peace toward all men, the place of greatest
uneasiness and peril, and therefore, in their eyes, the most eligible,
was the province of Massachusetts Bay.

The fines, imprisonments, and stripes, liberally distributed by our
pious forefathers, the popular antipathy, so strong that it endured
nearly a hundred years after actual persecution had ceased, were
attractions as powerful for the Quakers as peace, honor, and reward
would have been for the wordly-minded. Every European vessel brought new
cargoes of the sect, eager to testify against the oppression which they
hoped to share; and, when shipmasters were restrained by heavy fines
from affording them passage, they made long and circuitous journeys
through the Indian country, and appeared in the province as if conveyed
by a supernatural power. Their enthusiasm, heightened almost to madness
by the treatment which they received, produced actions contrary to the
rules of decency, as well as of rational religion, and presented a
singular contrast to the calm and staid deportment of their sectarian
successors of the present day. The command of the spirit, inaudible
except to the soul, and not to be controverted on grounds of human
wisdom, was made a plea for most indecorous exhibitions, which,
abstractedly considered, well deserved the moderate chastisement of the
rod. These extravagances, and the persecution which was at once their
cause and consequence, continued to increase, till, in the year 1659,
the government of Massachusetts