The pleasant little town of Burlington, N.J., in which I spent my earliest ministry, was the headquarters of orthodox Quakers.  I was thrown much into the society of their most eminent people, and very delightful society I found it.  The venerable Stephen Grellet, their apostle, who had held many interviews with the crowned heads of Europe, resided a little way from me up the street; and I saw the good old man with broad brimmed hat and straight coat pass my window every day.  Richard Mott lived but a little way from the town, and on the other side resided the widow of the celebrated Joseph John Gurney.  The wittiest Quaker in the town was my neighbor, William J. Allinson, the editor of the “Friends Review,” and an intimate friend of John G. Whittier.  One afternoon he ran over to my room, and said:  “Friend Theodore, John G. Whittier is at my house, and wants to see thee; he leaves early in the morning.”  I hastened across the street and, in the modest parlor of Friend Allinson, I saw, standing before the fire, a tall, slender man in Quaker dress, with a very lofty brow, and the finest eye I have ever seen in any American, unless it were the deep ox-like eye of Abraham Lincoln.  We had a pleasant chat about the anti-slavery, temperance and other moral reforms; and I went home with something of the feeling that Walter Scott says he had after seeing “Rabbie Burns,” Whittier was a retiring, home-keeping man.  He never crossed the ocean and seldom went even outside of his native home in Massachusetts.  During the summer of 1870 he ventured down to Brooklyn on a visit to his friend, Colonel Julian Allen.  On coming home one day, my servant said to me, “There was a tall Quaker gentleman called here, and left his name on this piece of paper.”  I was quite dumb-founded to read the name of “John G. Whittier,” and I lost no time in making my way up to the house where he was staying.  When I inquired how he had come to do me the honor of a call, he said:  “Well, yesterday, when I arrived and my friend Allen drove me up here, we passed a meeting house with a tall steeple, and when I heard it was thine, I determined to run down to thy house and see thee.”  As I was to have the “Chi Alpha,” the oldest and the most celebrated clerical association of New York at my house the next afternoon, I invited him to come and sup with them.  He cordially consented, and it may be supposed that the “Chi Alpha” was very glad to put aside for that evening all other matters, and listen to the fresh, racy and humorous talk of the great poet.  Underneath his grave and shy sobriety, flowed a most gentle humor.  He could tell a good story, and when he was describing the usages of the Quakers in regard to “Speaking in Meetings,” he told us that sometimes the voluntary remarks were not quite to the edification of the meeting.  It once happened that a certain George C——­ grew rather wearisome in his exhortations, and his prudent brethren, after solemn consultation, passed the following resolution: