Elizabeth Fry Author:Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III GIRLHOOD MR. GURNEY, though he held Quaker principles, was not a Plain Friend; that is, he and his family did not wear the Quaker dress, did not ... more »keep the stricter rules of the Society of Friends. Betsy and her sisters wore bright colors; they loved music and dancing, neither of which the Society allowed. Some of them- sang delightfully, we are told. "The sweet and thrilling pathos of their native warblings are still remembered with pleasure by those who heard them, especially the duets of Rachel and Elizabeth." So wrote Elizabeth's daughters, many years after. We can see the beautiful sisters gathered round the piano in the great drawing-room of Earlham; Elizabeth, tall, slight and graceful, with a cloud of soft fair hair, "very sweet and pleasing, though perhaps not so glowing and handsome as some of her sisters," Catherine, Richenda, and the rest. I wonder what they sang! Many "psalmsand hymns and spritual songs," no doubt; the beautiful hymns of John and Charles Wesley, two of which at least are familiar to us all today: "Jesus, lover of my soul," and the Christmas Hymn. (The first two lines of the latter have been altered, it must be confessed for the better. We sing Hark, the herald angels sing Glory to the new born king! but Charles Wesley wrote Hark! how all the welkin rings Glory to the King of kings!) Robert Burns was living in those days of Elizabeth Gurney's girlhood. I am not sure whether his songs would have been known at Earlham; the girls may possibly have sung "Bonny Doon," and "Highland Mary," but they would be more likely to sing Lady Nairn's "Land o' the Leal," or Cow- per's "Boadicea," if that noble ode was set to music. When they danced, it was "occasionally, in the large anteroom leading to the drawing-room, but with little of...« less