I did not go near the White House until about 25 years later when visiting my parents I walked up the country lane and to my horror I was confronted with a total wreck of a building, roofless, windows without glass swinging dangerously against what was left of a side wall and weeds growing to over ten feet in height. The walls which once surrounded the garden were no more than a heap of rubble. The entire sorry sight was a far cry from the house I had visited all those years ago. It brought to mind the following lines from Shelley’s poem Ozymandias;
My name is Ozymandias king of kings
Look on my works ye mighty and despair
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
As I turned towards home I blessed myself with the sign of the cross and said a prayer for the repose of the souls of the four members of that Quaker family who over a quarter of a century earlier had been so kind to our family.
The difference for me was that in the intervening years I had become aware of the Society of Friends or as they were more commonly known The Quakers. The kindness which they displayed back then was in the true spirit of the Quaker ethos. After all they provided Food, Shelter, Clothing and Financial Assistance to our ancestors in famine times.
It Happens Between Stops Page 16