One day, in the sick-chamber of Father Ephraim, who had been forty years the presiding elder over the Shaker settlement at Goshen, there was an assemblage of several of the chief men of the sect.  Individuals had come from the rich establishment at Lebanon, from Canterbury, Harvard and Alfred, and from all the other localities where this strange people have fertilized the rugged hills of New England by their systematic industry.  An elder was likewise there who had made a pilgrimage of a thousand miles from a village of the faithful in Kentucky to visit his spiritual kindred the children of the sainted Mother Ann.  He had partaken of the homely abundance of their tables, had quaffed the far-famed Shaker cider, and had joined in the sacred dance every step of which is believed to alienate the enthusiast from earth and bear him onward to heavenly purity and bliss.  His brethren of the North had now courteously invited him to be present on an occasion when the concurrence of every eminent member of their community was peculiarly desirable.

The venerable Father Ephraim sat in his easy-chair, not only hoary-headed and infirm with age, but worn down by a lingering disease which it was evident would very soon transfer his patriarchal staff to other hands.  At his footstool stood a man and woman, both clad in the Shaker garb.

“My brethren,” said Father Ephraim to the surrounding elders, feebly exerting himself to utter these few words, “here are the son and daughter to whom I would commit the trust of which Providence is about to lighten my weary shoulders.  Read their faces, I pray you, and say whether the inward movement of the spirit hath guided my choice aright.”

Accordingly, each elder looked at the two candidates with a most scrutinizing gaze.  The man—­whose name was Adam Colburn—­had a face sunburnt with labor in the fields, yet intelligent, thoughtful and traced with cares enough for a whole lifetime, though he had barely reached middle age.  There was something severe in his aspect and a rigidity throughout his person—­characteristics that caused him generally to be taken for a schoolmaster; which vocation, in fact, he had formerly exercised for several years.  The woman, Martha Pierson, was somewhat above thirty, thin and pale, as a Shaker sister almost invariably is, and not entirely free from that corpse-like appearance which the garb of the sisterhood is so well calculated to impart.

“This pair are still in the summer of their years,” observed the elder from Harvard, a shrewd old man.  “I would like better to see the hoar-frost of autumn on their heads.  Methinks, also, they will be exposed to peculiar temptations on account of the carnal desires which have heretofore subsisted between them.”

“Nay, brother,” said the elder from Canterbury; “the hoar-frost and the black frost hath done its work on Brother Adam and Sister Martha, even as we sometimes discern its traces in our cornfields while they are yet green.  And why should we question the wisdom of our venerable Father’s purpose, although this pair in their early youth have loved one another as the world’s people love?  Are there not many brethren and sisters among us who have lived long together in wedlock, yet, adopting our faith, find their hearts purified from all but spiritual affection?”