"That the way to Heaven lay by the gate of Hell;" the black room,
through which I passed into this, bearing some resemblance to the
latter, as this comparatively and by way of allusion might in some
sort be thought to bear to the former.

But I was quickly put out of these thoughts by the flocking in of
the other Friends, my fellow-prisoners, amongst whom yet, when all
were come together, there was but one whom I knew so much as by
face, and with him I had no acquaintance; for I having been but a
little while in the city, and in that time kept close to my studies,
I was by that means known to very few.

Soon after we were all gotten together came up the master of the
house after us, and demanded our names, which we might reasonably
have refused to give till we had been legally convened before some
civil magistrate who had power to examine us and demand our names;
but we, who were neither guileful nor wilful, simply gave him our
names, which he took down in writing.

It was, as I hinted before, a general storm which fell that day, but
it lighted most, and most heavily, upon our meetings; so that most
of our men Friends were made prisoners, and the prisons generally
filled. And great work had the women to run about from prison to
prison to find their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, or
their servants; for according as they had disposed themselves to
several meetings, so were they dispersed to several prisons. And no
less care and pains had they, when they had found them, to furnish
them with provisions and other necessary accommodations.

But an excellent order, even in those early days, was practised