Another matter that causes me anxiety is Susanna.
I never yearned for a soul as I yearn for hers! She has had the advantage of
more education and more reading than most of us have ever enjoyed; she's
gifted in teaching and she wins the children. She's discreet and spiritually
minded; her life in the world, even with the influence of her dissipated
husband, has n't really stained, only humbled her; she would make such a
Shaker, if she was once 'convinced,' as we have n't gathered in for years and
years; but I fear she's slipping, slipping away, Daniel!"
"What makes you feel so now, particularly?"
"She's diff'rent as time goes on. She's had more letters from that place where
her boy is; she cries nights, and though she does n't relax a mite with her
work, she drags about sometimes like a bird with one wing."
Elder Daniel took off his broadbrimmed hat to cool his forehead and hair,
lifting his eyes to the first pale stars that were trembling in the sky,
hesitating in silver and then quietly deepening into gold.
Brother Ansel was a Believer because he had no particular love for the world
and no great susceptibility to its temptations; but what had drawn Daniel Gray
from the open sea into this quiet little backwater of a Shaker Settlement?
After an adventurous early life, in which, as if youth-intoxicated, he had
plunged from danger to danger, experience to experience, he suddenly found
himself in a society of which he had never so much as heard, a company of
celibate brothers and sisters holding all goods and possessions in common, and
trying to live the "angelic life" on earth.
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