The Home at Jericho.

The village of Jericho, Long Island, is about 25 miles east of New York City, in the town of Oyster Bay. It has had no considerable growth since the days of Elias Hicks, and now contains only about a score and a half of houses. Hicksville, less than two miles away, the railroad station for the older hamlet, contains a population of a couple of thousand. It was named for Valentine Hicks, the son-in-law of Elias.

Running through Jericho is the main-traveled road from the eastern part of Long Island to New York, called Jericho Pike. In our time it is a famous thoroughfare for automobiles, is thoroughly modern, and as smooth and hard as a barn floor. In former days it was a toll-road, and over it Elias Hicks often traveled. A cross-country road runs through Jericho nearly north and south, leading to Oyster Bay. On this road, a few rods to the north from the turn in the Jericho Pike stands the house which was originally the Seaman homestead, where Elias Hicks lived from soon after his marriage till his death.

The house was large and commodious for its time, but has been remodeled, so that only part of the building now standing is as it was eighty years ago. The house ends to the road, with entrance from the south side. It was of the popular Long Island and New England construction, shingled from cellar wall to ridge-pole. Four rooms on the east end of the house, two upstairs and two down, are practically as they were in the days of Elias Hicks. In one of these he had his paralytic stroke, and in another he passed away. The comparatively wide hall which runs across the house, with the exception of the stairway, is as it was in the time of its distinguished occupant. A new stairway of modern construction now occupies the opposite side of the hall from the one of the older time. This hall-way, it is said, Elias Hicks loved to promenade, sometimes with his visitors, and here with characteristic warmth of feeling he sped his parting guests, when the time for their departure came.

Like the most of his neighbors, Elias Hicks was a farmer. The home place probably contained about seventy-five acres, but he possessed detached pieces of land, part of it in timber. Several years before his death he sold forty acres of the farm to his son-in-law, Valentine Hicks, thus considerably reducing the care which advancing years and increased religious labor made advisable.

Jericho still retains its agricultural character more than some of the other sections of neighboring Long Island. The multi-millionaire and the real estate exploiter have absorbed many of the old Friendly homes toward the Westbury neighborhood, and are pushing their ambitious intent at land-grabbing down the Jericho road.

If Elias were to return and make a visit from Jericho to the meeting at Westbury, as he often did in his time, three or four miles away, he would pass more whizzing automobiles en route than he would teams, and would see the landscape beautifully adorned with lawns and walks, with parks and drives on the hillsides, not to mention the costly Roman garden of one of Pittsburg's captains of industry. Should he so elect, he could be whirled in a gasoline car in a few minutes over a distance which it probably took him the better part of an hour to make in his day. As he went along he could muse over snatches of Goldsmiths' "Deserted Village," like the following, which would be approximately, if not literally, true:

But there are some compensations in the modern scene, and however emotionally sad the change, the helpfully suggestive side is not in lamentation over the inevitable, but in considering the growing demands which the situation makes upon the practical spiritual religion which Elias Hicks preached, and in which his successors still profess to believe.

A hundred years ago, wheat was a regular and staple farm product on Long Island, especially in and around Jericho, and on the Hicks farm. But no wheat is raised in this section now. The farmer finds it more profitable to raise the more perishable vegetables to feed the hungry hordes of the great city, which has crowded itself nearer and nearer to the farmers' domain.

Less than a quarter of a mile up the road from the Hicks home is the Friends' Meeting House, which Elias Hicks helped to build, if he did not design it. The timbers and rafters, which were large, and are still sound to the core, were hewed by hand of course. Like most of the neighboring buildings, its sides were shingled, and probably the original shingles have not been replaced since the house was built, a hundred and twenty-two years ago. The "public gallery" contained benches sloping steeply one above the other, making the view of the preacher's gallery easy from these elevated positions. Over the preacher's gallery, and facing the one just described, is room for a row of seats behind a railing. Whether this was a sort of a "watch-tower" from which the elders might observe the deportment of the young people in the seats opposite, or whether it was simply used for overflow purposes, tradition does not tell us.

The fact probably is that what is known as the Hicks property at Jericho came to Elias by his wife Jemima. There is every reason to believe that at the time of his marriage he was a poor man, and as the young folks took up their residence at the Seaman home soon after their marriage, there was no time for an accumulation of property on the part of the head of the new family. The economic situation involved in the matter under consideration had a most important bearing on the religious service of Elias Hicks. Taking the Seaman farm brought him economic certainty, if not independence. It is hardly conceivable that he could have given the large attention to the "free gospel ministry" which he did, had there been a struggle with debt and difficulty which was so incidental in laying the foundations of even a moderate success a century and a quarter ago. It is by no means to be inferred, however, that Elias Hicks was ever a wealthy man, or possessed the means of luxury, for which of course he had no desire, and against which he bore a life-long testimony. The real point to be gratefully remembered is that he was not overburdened with the care and worry which a less desirable economic condition would have enforced.

In the main, Elias Hicks saw his married children settle around him. Royal Aldrich, who married his oldest daughter, had a tannery, and lived on the opposite side of the road not far away. Valentine Hicks, who married another daughter, had a somewhat pretentious house for the time, at the foot of the little hill approaching the meeting house, and just beyond the house of Elias, Robert Seaman, who married the youngest daughter, lived only a few steps away. Joshua Willets, who married the third daughter, resided on the south side of the island, some miles distant. The time of scattering families, lured by business outlook and economic advantage, had not yet arrived.