r wandering with a rushlight in
the caves of the earth. When I confessed to her my great enjoyment in
works of fiction, dramatic performances, and dancing, and feared from
underneath that Quaker bonnet (I now loved so well) would come some
platitudes on the demoralizing influence of such frivolities, she
smiled, and said, "I regard dancing a very harmless amusement"; and
added, "the Evangelical Alliance that so readily passed a resolution
declaring dancing a sin for a church member, tabled a resolution
declaring slavery a sin for a bishop."

Sitting alone one day, as we were about to separate in London, I
expressed to her my great satisfaction in her acquaintance, and
thanked her for the many religious doubts and fears she had banished
from my mind. She said, "There is a broad distinction between religion
and theology. The one is a natural, human experience common to all
well-organized minds. The other is a system of speculations about the
unseen and the unknowable, which the human mind has no power to grasp
or explain, and these speculations vary with every sect, age, and type
of civilization. No one knows any more of what lies beyond our sphere
of action than thou and I, and we know nothing." Everything she said
seemed to me so true and rational, that I accepted her words of wisdom
with the same confiding satisfaction that did the faithful Crito
those of his beloved Socrates. And yet this pure, grand woman was
shunned and feared by the Orthodox Friends throughout England. While
in London a rich young Quaker of bigoted tendencies, who made several
breakfast and tea parties for the American delegates, always omitted
to invite Mrs. Mott. He very politely said to her on one occasion when
he was inviting others in her presence, "Thou must excuse me,
Lucretia, for not inviting thee with the rest, but I fear thy
influence on my children!!"

On several occasions when we all met at social gatherings in London,
Elizabeth Fry studiously avoided being in the same apartment with
Lucretia Mott. If Mrs. Mott was conversing with a circle of friends on
the lawn, Mrs. Fry would glide into the house. If Mrs. Mott entered at
one door, Mrs. Fry walked out the other. She really seemed afraid to
breathe the same atmosphere. On another occasion, at William Ball's,
at Tottenham, when more circumscribed quarters made escape impossible,
it was announced that Mrs. Fry felt a concern to say something to
those present. When all was silent she kn