John Hunt Journal, 1819 2mo. 20 - 1820 12mo. 3

              --February 1819--


About the 20th of the Second Month, 1819. I went to see several ancient widows and called to see a friend or friends who had lately earnestly invited me, and they said they were glad to see me. I said that was much better than if I had conducted [myself] so that they would not want to see me. The answer was a yes. I said I had been visiting and that I could not please myself at it. They said, maybe thee is hard to please. I said I thought I ought to be so; I have long thought it would be well if we were not so easy pleased with our social visits. Soon after, the subject so arrested my mind that I thought it might be of use to make some memorandum of my thoughts. I remember some years ago I mentioned the subject of common conversation in our social visits � of how poor and unprofitable it often was � in our select quarterly meeting, and it introduced a lively conference on the subject and lively, edifying remarks were made. William Penn says [that] in early days, Friends spent much of their time when together in solemn silence, feeling after their own and one another's states of conditions [Primitive Christianity Revived, first published 1696.]. They were then under humbling, trying circumstances, not knowing which minute their cruel persecutions would be upon them and haul them to prison. Were we under the like trials would our conversation not often be more weighty and more Heavenly than it is? And William Penn says the time will come when every visit shall be a meeting and every family a church and every head of a family a minister, and he says in a little while and it shall be so. And William Baily says, page 518, "and take heed of discourses among yourselves which are unnecessary, for the enemy hath a secret to effect among such things to draw your mind from the living sense of the precious seed of God in yours." [William Bayley,  A collection of the several writings of that true prophet, 1676.] Is not this a necessary caution in this day of ease? And see Power of Religion on the Mind, by Lindley Murray, 11 Edition concerning John Janeway: he was full of love and compassion to the souls of men, and often greatly lamented the barrenness of Christians in their concerns with each other. O, said he, what indifference to spend an hour or two together and to hear scarce