would in the open air. In a room adjoining above. These are made of two upper and a the vacuum pan are mills for reducing dried nether stone of Esopus granite. The upper roots to impalpable powder. These roots are stones are in the form of truncated cones, and first cracked to the size of "samp" in the room rest upon the nether stone, which is beveled. below, by being crushed under two huge discs A shaft in the centre, to which they are attached of Esopus granite, each four feet in diameter, a by arms, makes them revolve, and at the same foot in thickness and a ton in weight. These time they turn upon their own axes. The roots are made to revolve in a large vessel by steam ground under them by this double motion are power. The roots are then carried to the mills made into powder almost impalpable.

THE PHYSICIAN AT HIS DESK.

best common schools; and all the children in
the community are supplied with a thorough
common English education. In fact, nearly
the whole Society is now composed of educated
men and women; and I may venture to affirm
that there is not a community in our land, of
equal numbers, where general intelligence more
largely prevails. They have a library for com-
mon use, and at the business office I saw several
daily papers.
Isolated as they are from the
world around them-taking no part in elections
or other public affairs-yet they are alive to all
its passing events; and I found them generally
familiar with the social, religious, and political
topics of the day.

The reader will naturally inquire, "Whence the origin of this strange people?" I answer, from the depths of obscurity in an English provincial town. Here, in brief, is the record:

embraced their views, and formed a small society near Manchester. They at once attracted public attention, and were persecuted. They were considered insane, because they would sit immovable for hours, waiting for "the power of God," and then would commence jumping, whirling, trembling violently, and shouting for joy. Because of these bodily agitations they were called Shakers, and sometimes Shaking Quakers.

In 1758 a young woman of twenty-two, named Ann Stanley, the wife of a blacksmith, by whom she had borne four children who had died in infancy, became acquainted with the Wardleys, embraced the new and strange doctrine that marriage was sinful, and was a most earnest devotee. She assumed her maiden name of Lee, severed the marriage relation, and after nine years of severe discipline, and suffering of persecution as a half-crazed fanatic, she professed to have received a revelation from God. Then, although in prison, she boldly opened her mouth as a teacher. She declared that in her dwelt the "Word," the "Christ;" and the doctrine of his second appearance upon earth in the person of a woman became a dogma of the sect. She was acknowledged to be a spiritual mother in Israel, and she is known and revered by her four thousand followers to-day by the appellation of MOTHER ANN.

With her brother and a few followers Ann Lee came to America in 1774, and in the spring of 1776 they settled at Niskayuna (Watervliet), opposite Troy, New York, where the sect still have a community. Some people charged Mother Ann with witchcraft; and vigilant Whigs, at that opening period of the struggle for Independence, knowing that she preached vehemently against war in every shape, suspected her of secret correspondence with her countrymen, the British. A charge of high treason was preferred against her, and she and some of her followers were imprisoned at Albany in the summer of 1776. In the autumn she was sent as far as Poughkeepsie with the intention of forwarding her to New York, within the British lines. She was released by Governor Clinton in December, and returned to Watervliet, where her followers greatly increased.

In 1780 a wild revival movement occurred at Lebanon, Columbia County. It spread wonderfully among preachers and people. They sought for peace, but could not find it. Some finally visited "Mother Ann" at Watervliet, became convinced that she was possessed of the

During the great religious revivals in Europe, toward the close of the seventeenth century, societies were formed in one or two districts in France, whose members were wrought upon in a very extraordinary manner, both in body and mind. At times they were violent-right doctrine, that she was the "woman clothed ly agitated, and with loud voices they uttered warnings of God's wrath, persuasions to repentance, and prophecies of the near approach of the end of all things. Early in the last century some of these found their way into England, where they were known as French Prophets. Disciples gathered around them; and finally, in 1747, James and Jane Wardley, members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers,

with the sun," mentioned in the Apocalypse, and that in her Christ had again appeared upon earth. A flood of converts was now poured into the lap of the Shaker Church. "Mother Ann" became a Pontifex Maximus-a very Pope in authority-and a society of believers was established at New Lebanon. Having finished her mission, "Mother Ann" died at Watervliet on the 8th of September, 1784, in the forty-eighth

year of her age. Her remains rest beneath a

LICHENS.

ICHENS are a race of tiny plants but little

little mound about a quarter of a mile from the Inown to the world, and yet possessed of a

beauty by no means inferior to that of more gorgeous flowers or loftier trees. Man is but too apt to admire the boundless wealth and beauty of our great mother, Nature, only where gigantic proportions arrest his attention, or when the storm of enraged elements makes him aware of his own insignificance. Surely his head was not set on high that he might despise low things!

meeting-house at Watervliet, with nothing to mark the spot but a small rough stone, upon which is inscribed "M. A. L."-Mother Ann Lee. In childhood she was remarkable for her seriousness. At maturity she was rather below the common stature of women, rather thick set, but well proportioned. Her complexion was light and fair, and her eyes blue and penetrating. The society at New Lebanon grew vigorous-But to see the beauties with which every corner ly, and in 1787 they built quite a spacious house of worship there, which is still standing, and now used, as we have observed, as the Seed House of the community. Other societies have since been planted and are growing in various parts of the Union. They now number eighteen, having an aggregate of little more than four thousand members. The present "Gospel order of the Church" was established in 1792, and from that period the Shakers date their millennial era.

and crevice is decked, to read the lessons conveyed in Nature's subtlest works, more than the eye is required. We must be willing and able to listen to every beetle's lowly hum, to greet every flower by the wayside as it looks up to us and to heaven, and to question every stone, every pebble. If we thus look upon the tiny lichens around us, we will here also soon learn, by the aid of the microscope, that even in the smallest proportions

"not a beauty blows,

And not an opening blossom breathes in vain." Few only, it is true, are seen by the naked eye as they cover a stone with their warm mantle or "deck the rough castle's rifted tower." No old decaying rock, no crumbling ruin, and no ancient forest-chapel is without its forest of tiny lichens and mosses, that have settled down in every cleft and crevice, wherever the rain has left a grain of soil or a shadow of moisture. It

I have endeavored, in this brief sketch, to give a faithful outline-picture of the Shakers, with such drawings of objects of interest as I was enabled to make during a sojourn of two days with them. I am convinced, from observation and from the testimony of their immediate neighbors, that they live in strict accordance with their professions. They are hospitable to strangers, and kind and benevolent toward the community around them. In morals and citi-is these green or yellow little plants that give to zenship they are above reproach; and they are rock, ruin, and chapel their venerable appearloved by those who know them best. They ance. They enliven the monotonous coloring of have been ridiculed and maligned by those who stones, and mark, as it were, the footprints of must have been either ignorant or wicked; for Time, and the traces of organic life upon the apit seems impossible for any candid man, after parently lifeless masses. The stone thus bebecoming acquainted with their character, to comes a very museum of varied productions, and regard them otherwise than with the deepest re- the tiny plants connecting him, immovable and spect. Surely the sacrifices of the dearest inter- unfeeling as he appears, with their own merry ests of earth are sufficient guarantees of their sin-kingdom, thus carry him into the great, joyous cerity. Call it all delusion if you will, the impregnable fact that they have maintained their integrity and their faith for seventy years is vastly significant.

With their social and religious dogmas I have nothing to do in this connection; yet I can not let the occasion pass without quoting from Coventry Patmore's "Angel in the House," the following lines for the consideration of those within and without the pale of the Shaker Church:

"Say what of those who are not wives,

Nor have them; tell what fate they prove Who keep the pearl which happier lives Cast in the costly cup of love?

I answer (for the sacred Muse

Is dumb), Ill chance is not for aye;
But who, with erring preference, choose
The sad and solitary way,
And think peculiar praise to get

In Heaven, where error is not known,
They have the separate coronet

They sought, but miss a worthier crown. Virgins are they before the Lord,

Whose hearts are pure; the vestal fire

Is not, as some misread the Word,

By marriage quenched, but burns the higher."
VOL. XV.-No 86.-M

circle of living nature.

The strange and inexplicable beauty of simple walls and angular rocks is mainly due to these lichens, who, together with their brethren, the mosses, present an ever fresh and ever declining but never expiring life, and thus fill the heart of man, he knows not how, with sweet hope and tender solace.

They are the most modest children of Nature. Even when they appear in groups and in larger masses, they seem to be, at first sight, but stains and unsightly excrescences. We are, perhaps, most familiar with those that assume a bright orange color on the trunks of old trees, and these are ever seen on that side which is most exposed to warm and moist currents of air, or where a hawthorn "with moss and lichen gray, dies of old age." If we examine these strange, fastidious spots more closely, we find that they consist of a very peculiar growth, which presses closely upon the rough bark. Now it is so interlaced and interwoven with the latter that it can hardly be severed from tree or rock, and then again it clings to it by means of a thousand diminutive