for awkwardness, might not unreasonably be expected in those, who had neither learned to walk under the guidance of a dancing, master, nor to bow under the direction of the dominion of fashion.  If those and those only are to be esteemed really polished and courteous, who bow and scrape, and salute each other by certain prescribed gestures, then the Quakers will appear to have contracted much rust, and to have an indisputable right to the title of a clownish and inflexible people.

I must observe however that these appearances, though they may be substantial in the estimation of those who do not know them, gradually vanish with those, who do.  Their hospitality in their own houses, and their great attention and kindness, soon force out of sight all ideas of uncourteousness.  Their freedom also soon annihilates those of stiffness and reserve.  Their manners, though they have not the polished surface of those which are usually attached to fashionable life, are agreeable, when known.

There is one trait in the Quaker-manners, which runs through the whole society, as far as I have seen in their houses, and which is worthy of mention.  The Quakers appear to be particularly gratified, when those, who visit them, ask for what they want.  Instead of considering this as rudeness or intrusion, they esteem it as a favour done them.  The circumstance of asking, on such an occasion, is to them a proof, that there visitors feel themselves at home.  Indeed they almost always desire a stranger who has been introduced to them “to be free.”  This is their usual expression.  And if he assures them that he will, and if they find him asking for what he wishes to have, you may perceive in their countenances the pleasure, which his conduct has given them.  They consider him, when he has used this freedom, to have acted as they express it “kindly.”  Nothing can be more truly polite than that conduct to another, by which he shall be induced to feel himself as comfortably situated, as if he were in his own house.

As the Quakers desire their visitors to be free, and to do as they please, so they do not fail to do the same themselves, never regarding such visitors as impediments in the way of their concerns.  If they have any business or engagement out of doors, they say so and go, using no ceremony, and but few words as an apology.  Their visitors, I mean such as stay for a time in their houses, are left in the interim to amuse themselves as they please.  This is peculiarly agreeable, because their friends know, when they visit them, that they neither restrain, nor shackle, nor put them to inconvenience.  In fact it may be truly said that if satisfaction in visiting depends upon a man’s own freedom to do as he likes, to ask and to call for what he wants, to go out and come in as he pleases; and if it depends also on the knowledge he has, that, in doing all these things, he puts no person out of his way, there are no houses, where people will be better pleased with their treatment, than in those of the Quakers.