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A QUAKER DIARY
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increased extravagance. We hear no more of the men who went with clubs from shop to shop, "obliging ye people to lower their prices,"—a proceeding so manifestly absurd that "Tommy Redman, the Doctor's apprentice, was put in prison for laughing as ye Regulators passed by." We hear no more of houses searched or furniture carted away. Elizabeth Drinker's diary begins to deal with other matters, and we learn to our delight that this sedate Quakeress was passionately fond of reading romances; those alluring, long-winded, sentimental, impossible romances, dear to our great-grandmothers' hearts. It is true she does not wholly approve of such self-indulgence, and has ever ready some word of excuse for her own weakness; but none the less "The Mysteries of Udolpho" and its sister stories thrill her with delicious emotions of pity and alarm. "I have read a foolish romance called 'The Haunted Priory; or the Fortunes of the House of Rayo,'" she writes on one occasion; "but I have also finished knitting a pair of large cotton stockings, bound a petticoat, and made a batch of gingerbread. This I mention