A QUAKER DIARY
De tous ces titres, celui que j'aime le mieux est celui de Philadelphien, ami des frères. II y a bien des sortes de vanité, mais la plus belle est celle qui, ne s'arrogeant aucun titre, rend presque tous les autres ridicules.—Voltaire.
It is well for us who are interested in colonial days and colonial ways that their leisure gave men and women ample opportunity to keep diaries, and that a modesty now quite unknown made them willing to spend long hours in writing pages not destined for publication. There is something very charming about this old-fashioned, long-discarded reticence, this deliberate withholding of trivial incidents and fleeting impressions from the wide-mouthed curiosity of the crowd. Even when the Revolution had awakened that restless spirit of change which scorned the sobriety of the past, there lingered still in people's hearts an inherited instinct of reserve. Men breakfasted with Washington, dined with John Adams, fought by the side of La Fayette, and never dreamed
