THE EARNEST PHILANTHROPIST. an old acquaintance, and at a loss how to address him in the plain language of the Quakers, she took refuge in flight, to avoid the embarrassment. Her school and her charities now took the place of her old amusements; and so absorbed was she in these new and delightful pursuits, that she shrank at first from the proposals offered by Joseph Fry, at that time junior partner in a wealthy firm. But this lover-Friend perseveringly wooed her ; and at last, one day, Elizabeth received a letter from him "which she liked;" and the result was, that on the 19th of October, 1800, the fair young Quakeress "woke in a sort of terror at the prospect before her, but soon gained quietness and something of cheerfulness," and sufficient courage to go through the wedding ceremony at the Friends' Meeting- house, Norwich. She-then, at the age of twenty, bade farewell to her scholars and her pensioners, and quitted the home of her youth for that of her husband, entering on a new sphere as the wife of a London merchant in a city house. It was a generai custom, at that period, for the junior partner to reside in the house of business; and in St. Mildred's Court, in a large, airy, com- modious dwelling, the newly-married couple estab- lished themselves. This home was a strange contrast to the one thebride had just left. From the soft mur- muring of the leafy retreats at Earlham to the noisy, busy hum of the great metropolis, from a gay and cheerful circle to a staid and serious household in 19
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