Notes and Queries

92 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL SOCIETY. NOTES AND QUERIES New England and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings, 1699.— "The Friends & Brethren of Pensilvania have from theire Yearely Meetinge proposed to this Meetinge by our frinds Samuell Jennings & Phineas Pemberton who are now here with us to have A correspondence each with other, either by Epistle or by ye visit of some frinds from hence if it shall please y* Lord to put it into theire harts so to doe ' soe they may heare of ye Affaire of truth & how truth prospers & for ye mutual comfort and strength of each other & this meetinge hath generally consented with greate freedome it should be soe." From Minutes of New England Yearly Meeting, 1699. Epigram by David Garrick.— The writer has several times been asked for the following story, and having come across it in an old newspaper clipping, he sends it to the Bulletin for what it is worth. As Garrick died in 1779, the incident, if true, must have taken place before 1780. " It was reported in 1835 or 1836, I think, in The Sheffield Iris, a paper of the well-known Scotch poet, James Montgomery. The scene was the Quaker meeting -house in Sheffield. The lines were attributed to the pencil of David Garrick, who had been performing in Sheffield. The meeting -house was built on the side of a hill, with the front door and yard facing on one street and the cellar opening on the street below . Garrick, passing, saw the vintner rolling out the casks of wine. He mounted the steps in the alleyway adjoining the meeting -house and looking in saw the Quakers in their quiet ' Fifth-day Meeting.' The incongruity struck him forcibly, and he pencilled on the meeting-house door the lines : " There is a spirit above, and a spirit below; A spirit of peace, and a spirit of woe; The spirit above is the spirit of love, And the spirit below is the spirit of woe; The spirit above is the spirit divine, The spirit below is the spirit of wine. " The Sheffield Quakers needed no further rebuke. They immediately bought the lease from the vintner, paying him back every penny received for five years' rental, the time the lease had A Singular Bible.—Not long since the writer had the opportunity of examining a Bible NOTES AND QUERIES. 93 which formerly belonged to a "plain" woman Friend of New York Yearly Meeting in the early part of the nineteenth century. The Bible itself, quarto in size, was published in 1765 by Robert Baskett, of London, an authorized publisher of the Bible at that time. The volume had evidently been well read, but the peculiarity was that the reader had stuck a pin through texts which for some reason attracted her attention. There must have been about two hundred pins thus employed, making some pages look like a paper of pins. The favorite book was Isaiah, next came Jeremiah, after these Proverbs, Job and Luke. I Chronicles , Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther , Haggai, Zephaniah and Malachi in the Old Testament, and II Thessalonians, I Timothy, Titus, Philemon, I Peter, II and III John, and Jude in the New Testament, had no pins. The character of the verses thus marked varies greatly, some evidently reflecting the feelings of the reader at the time, others conveying little or no information , and some raising the question for what possible reason they should have been marked. The general tone of the verses chosen is sombre rather than hopeful, and the great number marked in the Old Testament is a true indication of the general character of the religious thought of the day. Swedenborgian Bible.—It may not be generally known that Swedenborg rejected parts of the Bible, and so the Bible of the " Church of the New Jerusalem," commonly known as Swedenborgian , omits I and II Chronicles , Ruth, Esther, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, and all of the New Testament except the four Gospels and Revelation. The True Way of Life.—Edward Grubb has rewritten his little book with this title, noticed in the Bulletin two or three years ago, and in its improved form it can again be recommended as a clear and forcible statement...