10 A WORD AT TEE START. 



ness of the surroundings doubtless had its influence in 

 deciding their choice. So strict were they, as their meet- 

 ing records show, that probably they would have covered 

 up any natural beauty that might have had a tendency 

 to foster a poetical sentiment among their people ; just 

 as they desired their blooming maidens, if their color 

 was too bright, to dust their cheeks with flour before at- 

 tending meeting. It proved to be a " concern " upon 

 the minds of the elders lest the aforesaid rosy cheeks 

 should distract the attention of the young men who 

 sat on benches so placed that they could look upon 

 the fair faces of these maidens. Even in such prosaic 

 times the young men thought a pretty girl was more 

 to be desired that a drowsy sermon, and their seniors 

 chided them for so thinking. The descendants of these 

 Quakers, happily less strict, still assemble in the old 

 meeting-house. 



But long years ago a gifted man, Archibald, nephew 

 of William Bartram, the naturalist and traveler, thought 

 otherwise of this neighborhood and the young maidens 

 of his day. Of these meadows and the wooded bluff he 

 sang: 



" Sweet Nottingham ! thy charms I prize, 

 Where yonder hills abruptly rise, 

 Which gird thy valleys green ; 

 At dawn, at noon, at close of day, 

 Along these heights I love to stray 



And gaze upon the scene/' 



This, and much more, he found to say about the spot 

 during his many visits, just eighty years ago found it 

 to say, too, in spite of living in Bartram's garden on the 

 Schuylkill, where there was so much to attract a poet and 

 naturalist. The matter, perhaps, is explicable from the 

 fact that a maiden was even more attractive than the 



