118 OCEAN TO OCEAN ON HORSEBACK, 



Nassau House^ 



Nassau, New York, 



May Seventeenth. 



Ordered my horse at ten in the morning, and before 

 riding on stopped at the office of the Berkshire 

 Eagle to talk a few minutes with the editor. The 

 route from Pittsfield lay over the Boston and Albany 

 Turnpike, one of the villages on the way being West 

 Lebanon. Here we had dinner. While quietly pur- 

 suing my journey afterwards, in crossing the Pittsfield 

 Mountain, I overtook Egbert Jolls, a farmer, with 

 whom I had a long and interesting conversation. He 

 amused me with stories of the Lebanon Shakers, among 

 whom he had lived many years, and whose peculiar 

 belief and customs have always set them widely apart 

 from other sects. Perhaps the most singular point in 

 their doctrine is that God is dual, combining in the One 

 Person the eternal Father and Mother of all generated 

 nature. They believe that the revelation of God is 

 progressive, and in its last aspect the manifestation was 

 God revealed in the character of Mother, as an evidence 

 of Divine affection. Ann Lee, the daughter of a Man- 

 chester blacksmith, is the founder of the sect, and 

 considered from her holy life to be the human repre- 

 sentation of this Divine duality. This is a strange 

 belief, and one that is not generally known, but its 

 adherents have among other good traits one which 

 commends them to the respect of those who know any- 

 thing of them, and that is their sober and industrious 

 habits. 



Soon after crossing the State line between Massachu* 



