ELIZABETH FRY, was limited, and who was then nursing her first child, living alone during her husband's absence, in a small house near to Norwich. One day the lady was surprised by a sharp ring at the door; and directly afterwards her servant came running up with a basket which contained a chicken and some little delicacies. It had been left, the servant told her, in a broad Norfolk dialect, by " a beautiful lady on horseback in a scarlet riding habit," whose groom had informed her was Miss Elizabeth Gurney. The delicate at- tention was frequently repeated, although the young wife was, personally, a stranger to Elizabeth and her family. " Even still," she again writes, "I feel a hankering after the world and its gaieties; but what real satis- faction is there in being admired?" But a few days spent at Colebrook Dale, among relatives who were Plain Quakers, and earnest in their religious feelings, strengthened the sinking heart. She finally bid adieu to the scarlet habit and purple boots, and abandoned dancing and music, "the first pleasures in life ;" though she confesses, "If I could make a rule never to give way to vanity, excitement, or flirting, I do not think I should object to dancing; but it always leads me into some one of these faults ; indeed, I never remember dancing without feeling one, if not a little of all the three. Lastly, she adopted the staid and formal language of her sect; though a dread of ridicule long held her deliberating on this particular. One day, meeting 18
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