She agreed that it would be delightful, but she added, "I fear you will not succeed; we are not used to such sort of things here, and I know it is considered very indelicate for ladies and gentlemen to sit down together on the grass." I could multiply anecdotes of this nature; but I think these sufficient to give an accurate idea of the tone of manners in this particular, and I trust to justify the observations I have made.
One of the spectacles which produced the greatest astonishment on us all was the Republican simplicity of the courts of justice.
We had heard that the judges indulged themselves on the bench in those extraordinary attitudes which, doubtless, some peculiarity of the American formation leads them to find the most comfortable.

Of this we were determined to judge for ourselves, and accordingly entered the court when it was in full business, with three judges on the bench.

The annexed sketch will better describe what we saw than any thing I can write.
Our winter passed rapidly away, and pleasantly enough, by the help of frosty walks, a little skaiting, a visit to Big-Bone Lick, and a visit to the shaking Quakers, a good deal of chess, and a good deal of reading, notwithstanding we were almost in the back woods of Western America.
The excursion to Big-Bone Lick, in Kentucky, and that to the Quaker village, were too fatiguing for females at such a season, but our gentlemen brought us home mammoth bones and shaking Quaker stories in abundance.
These singular people, the shaking Quakers of America, give undeniable proof that communities may exist and prosper, for they have continued for many years to adhere strictly to this manner of life, and have been constantly increasing in wealth.

They have formed two or three different societies in distant parts of the Union, all governed by the same general laws, and all uniformly prosperous and flourishing.
There must be some sound and wholesome principle at work in these establishments to cause their success in every undertaking, and this principle must be a powerful one, for it has to combat much that is absurd and much that is mischievous.
The societies are generally composed of about an equal proportion of males and females, many of them being men and their wives; but they are all bound by their laws not to cohabit together.

Their religious observances are wholly confined to singing and dancing of the most grotesque kind, and this repeated so constantly as to occupy much time; yet these people become rich and powerful wherever they settle themselves.