Category Archives: Stories-Quaker

Esther & The Heathens: A Quaker Valentine Romance

The night was cold now, and her breath billowed faintly over her shoulders as she hurried after the dark figure walking ahead up the quiet street. “Will!” she called again. “Wait for me!”

He stopped and turned. “Esther?” he called. “Is it thee?” He clasped her hands in his as she came up to him. “Esther, I–” he began. “Thee is shivering,” he interrupted himself. “It is cold. Thee has no coat.”

Esther shook her head. “I am not cold, Will. Let’s walk.” She took his arm now, firmly. They went on in silence for a few moments. Then Esther heard singing.

They were approaching the Unitarian Church again. The service was concluding with another hymn. Esther stopped a few houses away, and motioned for Will to listen with her. She couldn’t make out the words, but the rise and fall of the melody was enough.

They stood there, breathing out vague cones of mist, for only a few minutes, through no more than two verses of the hymn. But in that brief span of time, clarity came to Esther.

In her careful schoolteacher’s way, she observed the process with a certain professional detachment, making mental note of how to describe it to her brother Jonah, in answer to his last question of the evening before, as well as for recording in her Journal.

It was nothing spectacular or miraculous, she realized: more like seeing a glass full of muddy water become transparent as the sediment settled to the bottom, or watching a distant ship change suddenly from a hazy blur to a sharply-defined image as she refocussed her father’s old spyglass. There was no new thought or impulse in her mind; rather, she was now able to pull what was already there together in a new way, a way that made new and compelling sense.

“Esther, what is it?” Will perceived that something was happening; she had stopped trembling and was standing quite still, staring into the night. At his question she seemed to return from far away, but then she looked at him intently and tightened her grip on his arm.

Dog Days True Quaker Stories: The Party That Went On Too Long

Much of my initial “information” about the Communist Party came from watching a TV show, “I Led Three Lives,” after we got a TV in mid-1952. The show started the next year and ran for more than a hundred episodes. It was inspired by the true-life career of Herbert Philbrick of Boston.

For years, Philbrick was a seemingly ordinary white collar office worker. But he was also a secret member of the Communist Party, spying and planning to overthrow the American government — and even more secretly, a double agent helping the FBI foil the Communist schemes. In 1952, he published a best-selling book about all this; and Hollywood jumped on the story line.

(In an episode I sadly missed, one such –fictional– plot was about how the party was going to turn vacuum cleaners into handheld missile launchers. Sound, um, far-fetched? But J. Edgar Hoover approved that episode, as he did all of them, so it must have been thrilling.)

Now I know much better how, in the late 1940s and into the 1960s, “the Communists” were a very big deal for Americans. Hiss’s two trials marked a major turning point in U.S. public opinion, toward a hard anti-communism, of the sort I grew up absorbing like milk on cornflakes.

From “Meetings” — Life, The Woods, & The Chainsaw

There was more to see on Bert’s farm than the fiery riot of the maples. He took us on a tour past his barn, down a path through a copse of these trees, beneath which the ground was crowded with seedlings and saplings, still green and fluttering in the morning breeze. Farther on, the path led us to his large woodlot, in which tall pines stood in rows.

We stopped, and Bert invited us to contemplate the two scenes we now confronted. On one side were the native trees, especially the maples, huddling together at random. But really, Bert explained, if we could see the world from their perspective, the air of vivid autumn exuberance was an illusion; in fact, they were caught in a desperate struggle: each tree was stretching for the sky, competing with all the rest to take in enough sunlight to make its food.

This was not a friendly contest, but life or death. And below, the riot of green around our feet was even more deceptive: practically all the slim saplings and seedlings we could see were almost certainly doomed. Crowded out by others, with the bigger trunks and branches blocking access to direct sun, only one in hundreds or a thousand would survive to become a tree.

I looked around the scene again; where had my naïve townie’s green eden suddenly gone?

A Quaker Memorial Day

While much of the rest of the U.S. population is involved in or watching Memorial Day events centered on those killed in our wars, I hope Quakers will make room for a different approach to this observance.
To be sure, Friends have much to remember, and many to memorialize in regard to war also. For one thing, there were many Quakers who, despite what is called the Peace testimony, felt obliged to take up arms in one war or another; their number is large, and we are best advised not to deceive ourselves about that.

At the same time, in all these wars, where Quakers were present, significant numbers of them have stuck to the testimony and declined involvement in combat. The specifics vary with the wars, and personalities; the stories are quite varied. But many underwent awful ordeals, and not a few paid for their testimony with their lives.

Reflecting on what I know of this, my thoughts turned to the most lethal of U.S. wars (so far), the Civil War of 1861-1865.

More Mysterious Quakers & More Quaker Mysteries

CEF: Besides all this mystery writing, you’re clerk of Amesbury Friends Meeting, which is historic as heck, poet John Greenleaf Whittier’s home. Tell us about your Quaker pilgrimage. I’m particularly interested in hearing about Friends — present and past — who may have been particularly meaningful for you.

EM: Yes, I am clerk. I love our historic meetinghouse, which John Greenleaf Whittier helped design – he was on the building committee. I’ve been a member for twenty-six years, and until three years ago I drove from neighboring towns to Amesbury. Now I walk to Meeting on Sunday mornings, musing every single time about other Friends walking to the same Meetinghouse over the centuries. I first went to Meeting for worship in Bloomington, Indiana, and realized I’d found my spiritual home. Now Amesbury Friends are my second family.
CEF: I see that poet Whittier at least makes a cameo in your upcoming mystery, “Delivering The Truth” about Rose Carroll, a Quaker midwife in Amesbury in 1888. (Can’t wait to read that one!) Will he be back in future Rose Carroll stories?

EM: Whittier is indeed a friend and mentor to Rose, and he’s in every book.