Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1872-07-04

INSTINCT SUPERIOR TO REAsON--DE-
FICTION AND MARRIAGE AMONG THE
WATERvLIET SHAKERS. Into the we'll
known .soriginal' Shaker community at
Watervliet, near the capitol of this
State, there were adopted, some twenty |
five years ago, two orphans, named re-
spectively Ephraim d. Frost and Ellen F.
Ball-the former in his twelfth, the lat
ter in her fifth year. These children,
from their amiable tractability, delicate
physical organizations, and ready adapt
ability to the common fraternal spirit of
their personal surroundings, were deem
ed particularly promising subjects for
constraint to maturity of contented
le-blessedness, and were trained with
an amount of care and carefully gradu-
ated inculcations of reason, intended to
make them ultimate model illustrations
of the thorough practicability as well as
spiritual beauty of the system. Under
such assiduous culture Ephraim and
Ellen grew to youthful vanity and i'm
aginatiOn, to maturer self-consciousness
and to still maturer social sensibility,
without defined inclinations to any asso-
citation not sanctioned by the laws of
their community If they had vague
disposition at times to something more
free of personal expression than was
echoed in the apparent natures of those
around them, they did not understand it
sufficiently to trust it beyond the privacy
of their own unspoken thoughts, or eX-
planned it to themselves only as All in
! considerable element of that worldly UNI
| rest which they had been taught to es-
| TEEN as natures instructive instigation to
! desert of a more restful world to come.
| So, remaining true in spirit as in deed to
/ the teachings Of their faith for a whole
| quarter Of century, their exemplary
lives secured to them promotions to
! elderships, in which each became spirttu-
! al rulers over hundreds of ''brothers"
and sisters. But even after all this
after the first glow of youth had faded
/ from both natures and never-exercised
| or comprehended instinct had suppos-
edly lost all magnetic impulse for them
their Shakerism was still at the mercy
Of pettiest accident. In what hitherto
unknown thought, or glance, or word
between them that accident took effect
is not revealed; but it did occur at
last, and was at once a revelation and a
| revolution. All the reasoning and ella
horate spiritual sophistry of twenty-five
years were as the idle wind then against
an impulse or naturel instinct as STRONG
as the whole strength of life. Alas
for the eldership of Watervliet, on
Thursday of week before last Epraim
Frost and Ellen Ball, still in the prim
and qnakerly costume of their sect, were
fugitiyes at the Merchants Hotel in
Dayton, O., making nervous inquiry
says the journal of that town for a
magistrate who should grant them q
marriage license. The necessary docu-
ment obtained, a squire was procured &c
solemnize the wedding ceremony in tho
hotel parlor, and now Mr.. and Mrs
Frost. laying aside the faith with the
habiliments Of their former people, &C
forth Into their new world to find, il
their common sorrows no less than il
their common joys natures noblest vim
dication against those who would make
her better by making her less.-Neo
York HoraH.