, ran home as rapidly as he could. It was late
that night when he reached his house and, rapping on the door, called:

"Good-wife! Good-wife, awake and let me in!"

"John Louder, wherefore came you so early, when I thought you had gone
to stalk the deer and would not come before morning?"

"I have seen him!"

"Whom have you seen?"

"The man with the book."

This announcement produced great consternation in the mind of good-wife
Louder. To have seen the man with the book was an evil omen, and to sign
this book was the loss of one's eternal soul.

"Did you sign it, John?" she asked.

"No."

"God be praised!"

CHAPTER II.

PENNSYLVANIA.

I had a vision: evening sat in gold
Upon the bosom of a boundless plain,
Covered with beauty; garden, field and fold,
Studding the billowy sweep of ripening grain,
Like islands in the purple summer main,
The temples of pure marble met the sun,
That tinged their white shafts with a golden stain
And sounds of rustic joy and labor done,
Hallowed the lonely hour, until her pomp was gone.
--Croly.

Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous of all the errors of mankind.
A false leader in religion may be more fatal than an incompetent general
of an army, therefore ministers of the gospel and teachers have the
greatest task imposed on them of any of God's creation. When once one's
religion runs mad, barbarity assumes the support of conscience and feels
its approval in the consummation of the most heinous crimes. The
Pilgrims and Puritans who had fled from religious persecutions across
the seas, and had come to the wilderness to worship God according to
their own conscience were unwilling to grant the same privilege to
others. For this reason they banished Roger Williams and persecuted
other religious sects not in accordance with their own views.

They whipped Quakers, bored holes in their tongues, branded them with
hot irons, and even hung them for their religious views. Why need one
blame Spain for the infamous inquisition, when the early churches of
Protestantism did fully as bad? Religious fervor controlled by prejudice
and ignorance is the greatest calamity that can befall a nation.

The Quakers appeared first in England about the time Roger Williams
procured his charter for Rhode Island. The term Quaker now so venerated
and respected was given this sect in derision, just as