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.