This
letter is emphatically stiled "the General Epistle." The yearly
meeting, having now lasted about ten days, is dissolved after a solemn
pause, and the different deputies are at liberty to return home.
This important institution of the yearly meeting brings with it, on
every return, its pains and pleasures. To persons of maturer years, who
sit at this time on committee after committee, and have various offices
to perform, it is certainly an aniversary of care and anxiety, fatigue
and trouble. But it affords them, on the other hand, occasions of
innocent delight. Some, educated in the same school, and others, united
by the ties of blood and youthful friendship, but separated from one
another by following in distant situations the various concerns of life,
meet together in the intervals of the disciplinary business, and feel,
in the warm recognition of their ancient intercourse, a pleasure, which
might have been delayed for years, but for the intervention of this
occasion. To the youth it affords an opportunity, amidst this concourse
of members, of seeing those who are reputed to be of the most exemplary
character in the society, and whom they would not have had the same
chance of seeing at any other time. They are introduced also at this
season to their relations and family friends.
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