Ben was naturally comic in a high degree, and this pleasant vein,
greatly improved by his present golden prospects, betrayed him into
many a frolic with Keimer, to whom he had prudently attached himself
as a journeyman, until the Annis should sail. The reader will excuse
Ben for these frolics when he comes to learn what were their aims; as
also what an insufferable old creature this Keimer was. Silly as a
BOOBY, yet vain as a JAY, and garrulous as a PIE, he could never rest
but when in a stiff argument, and acting the orator, at which he
looked on Cicero himself as but a boy to him. Here was a fine target
for Ben's SOCRATIC ARTILLERY, which he frequently played off on the
old pomposo with great effect. By questions artfully put, he would
obtain of him certain points, which Keimer readily granted, as seeing
in them no sort of connexion with the matter in debate. But yet these
points, when granted, like distant nets slyly hauling round a porpoise
or sturgeon, would, by degrees, so completely circumvent the silly
fish, that with all his flouncing and fury he could never extricate
himself, but rather got more deeply entangled. Often caught in this
way, he became at last so afraid of Ben's _questions_, that he would
turn as mad when one of them was "_poked at him_," as a bull at sight
of a scarlet cloak; and would not answer the simplest question without
first asking, "_well, and what would you make of that?_" He came at
length to form so exalted an opinion of Ben's talents for refutation,
that he seriously proposed to him one day that they should turn out
together and preach up a NEW RELIGION! Keimer was to preach and make
the converts, and Ben to answer and put to silence the gainsayers. He
said a _world of money_ might be made by it.
On hearing the outlines of this new religion, Ben found great fault
with it. This he did only that he might have another frolic with
Keimer; but his frolics were praiseworthy, for they all "leaned to
virtue's side." The truth is, he saw that Keimer was prodigiously a
hypocrite. At every whip-stitch he could play the knave, and then for
a pretence would read his Bible. But it was not the _moral part_ of
the Bible, the sweet precepts and parables of the Gospel that he read.
No verily. Food so angelic was not at all to the tooth of his childish
fancy, which delighted in nothing but the _novel_ and _curious_. Like
too many of the saints now-a-days, he would rather read about the
WITCH OF ENDOR, than the GOOD SAMARITAN, and hear a sermon on the
_brazen candlesticks_ than on the LOVE OF GOD. And then, O dear! who
was Melchizedeck? Or where was the land of Nod? Or, was it in the
shape of a _serpent or a monkey_ that the devil tempted Eve? As he was
one day poring over the pentateuch as busy after some nice game of
this sort as a terrier on the track of a weazle, he came to that
famous text where Moses says, "_thou shall not mar the corners of thy
beard_." Aye! this was the divinity for Keimer. It struck him like a
new light from the clouds: then rolling his eyes as from an
apparition, he exclaimed, "miserable man that I am! and was I indeed
forbidden to mar even the corners of my beard, and have I been all
this time shaving myself as smooth as an eunuch! Fire and brimstone,
how have you been boiling up for me, and I knew it not! Hell, deepest
hell is my portion, that's a clear case, unless I reform. And reform I
will if I live. Yes, my poor naked chin, if ever I but get another
crop upon thee and I suffer it to be touched by the ungodly steel,
then let my right hand forget her cunning."
From that day he became as shy of a razor as ever Samson was. His long
black whiskers "_whistled in the wind_." And then to see how he would
stand up before his glass and stroke them down, it would have reminded
you of some ancient Druid, adjusting the _sacred Mistletoe_.
Ben could not bear that sight. Such shameless neglect of angel
morality, and yet such fidgetting about a goatish beard! "Heavens,
sir," said he to Keimer, one day in the midst of a hot argument,
"Who can think, with common sense,
A smooth shaved face gives God offence?
Or that a whisker hath a charm,
Eternal justice to disarm?"
He even proposed to him to get _shaved_. Keimer swore outright that he
would never lose his beard. A stiff altercation ensued. But Keimer
getting angry, Ben agreed at last to give up the beard. He said that,
"as the beard at best was but an external, a mere excrescence, he
would not insist on that as so very essential. But certainly sir,"
continued he, "there is one thing that is."
Keimer wanted to know what that was.
"Why sir," added Ben, "this turning out and preaching up a NEW
RELIGION, is, without doubt, a very serious affair, and ought not to
be undertaken too hastily. Much time, sir, in my opinion at least,
should be spent in making preparation, in which, fasting should
certainly have a large share."
Keimer, who was a great glutton, said he could _never fast_.
Ben then insisted that if they were not to fast altogether, they
ought, at any rate, to abstain from animal food, and live as the
saints of old did, on _vegetables_ and _water_.
Keimer shook his head, and said that if he were to live on vegetables
and water, he should soon die.
Ben assured him that it was entirely a mistake. He had tried it often,
he said, and could testify from his own experience that he was never
more healthy and cheerful than when he lived on vegetables alone. "Die
from feeding on vegetables, indeed! Why, sir, it contradicts reason;
and contradicts all history, ancient and profane. There was Daniel,
and his three young friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who fed
on a vegetable diet, of choice; did they languish and die of it? or
rather did they not display a rouge of health and fire of genius, far
beyond those silly youths who crammed on all the luxuries of the royal
table? And that amiable Italian nobleman, Lewis Cornaro, who says of
bread, that it was such a dainty to his palate, that he was almost
afraid, at times, it was too good for him to eat; did he languish and
die of this simple fare? On the contrary, did he not out-live three
generations of gratified epicures; and after all, go off in his second
century, like a bird of Paradise, singing the praises of Temperance
and Virtue? And pray, sir," continued Ben, "where's the wonder of all
this? Must not the blood that is formed of vegetables be the purest in
nature? And then, as the spirits depend on the blood, must not the
spirits secreted from such blood be the purest too? And when this is
the case with the blood and spirits, which are the very life of the
man, must not that man enjoy the best chance for such healthy
secretions and circulations as are most conducive to long and happy
life?"
While Ben argued at this rate, Keimer regarded him with a look which
seemed to say, "Very true, sir; all this is very true; but still I
cannot _go it_."
Ben, still unwilling to give up his point, thought he would make one
more push at him. "What a pity it is," said he with a sigh, "that the
blessings of so sublime a religion should be all lost to the world,
merely for lack of a little fortitude on the part of its propagators."
This was touching him on the right string; for Keimer was a man of
such vanity, that a little flattery would put him up to any thing. So
after a few _hems_ and _ha's_, he said, he believed he would, at any
rate, make a trial of this new regimen.
Having thus carried his point, Ben immediately engaged a poor old
woman of the neighbourhood to become their cook; and gave her off
hand, written receipts for three and forty dishes; not one of which
contained a single atom of fish, flesh, or fowl. For their first day's
breakfast on the _new regimen_, the old woman treated them with a
terrene of oatmeal gruel. Keimer was particularly fond of his
breakfast, at which a nice beef-stake with onion sauce was a standing
dish. It was as good as a farce to Ben, to see with what an eye Keimer
regarded the terrene, when entering the room, in place of his stake,
hot, smoking, and savory, he beheld this pale, meagre-looking slop.
"What have you got there?" said he, with a visage grum, and scowling
eye.
"A dish of hasty pudding," replied Ben, with the smile of an innocent
youth who had a keen appetite, with something good to satisfy it--"a
dish of nice hasty pudding, sir, made of oats."
"Of OATS!" retorted Keimer, with a voice raised to a scream.
"Yes, sir, _oats_," rejoined Ben,--"_oats_, that precious grain which
gives such elegance and fire to our noblest of quadrupeds, the horse."
Keimer growled out, that he was no horse to eat oats.
"No matter for that," replied Ben, "'tis equally good for men."
Keimer denied that any human being ever eat oats.
"Aye!" said Ben, "and pray what's become of the Scotch? Don't they
live on oats; and yet, where will you find a people so 'bonny, blythe,
and gay;' a nation of such wits and warriors."
As there was no answering this, Keimer sat down to the terrene, and
swallowed a few spoonfuls, but not without making as many wry faces as
if it had been so much jalap; while Ben, all smile and chat,
breakfasted most deliciously.
At dinner, by Ben's order, the old woman paraded a trencher piled up
with potatoes. Keimer's grumbling fit came on him again. "He saw clear
enough," he said, "that he was to be poisoned."
"Poh, cheer up, man," replied Ben; "this is your right preacher's
bread."
"Bread the d----l!" replied Keimer, snarling.
"Yes, bread, sir," continued Ben, pleasantly; "the bread of _life_,
sir; for where do you find such health and spirits, such bloom and
beauty, as among the honest-hearted IRISH, and yet for their
breakfast, dinner, and supper, the potato is their tetotum; the
_first_, _second_, and _third_ course." In this way, Ben and his old
woman went on with Keimer; daily ringing the changes on oat-meal
gruel, roasted potatoes, boiled rice, and so on, through the whole
family of roots and grains in all their various genders, moods, and
tenses.
Sometimes, like a restive mule, Keimer would kick up and show strong
symptoms of flying the way. But then Ben would prick him up again with
a touch of his ruling passion, vanity; "only think, Mr. Keimer," he
would say, "only think what has been done by the founders of _new
religions_: how they have enlightened the ignorant, polished the rude,
civilized the savage, and made heroes of those who were little better
than brutes. Think, sir, what Moses did among the stiff-necked Jews;
what Mahomet did among the wild Arabs--and what you may do among these
gentle drab-coated Pennsylvanians." This, like a spur in the flank of
a jaded horse, gave Keimer a new start, and pushed him on afresh to
his gruel breakfasts and potato dinners. Ben strove hard to keep him
up to this gait. Often at table, and especially when he saw that
Keimer was in good humour and fed kindly, he would give a loose to
fancy, and paint the advantages of their new regimen in the most
glowing colours. "Aye, sir," he would say, letting drop at the same
time his spoon, as in an ecstasy of his subject, while his pudding on
the platter cooled--"aye, sir, now we are beginning to live like men
going a preaching indeed. Let your epicures gormandize their fowl,
fish, and flesh, with draughts of intoxicating liquors. Such gross,
inflammatory food may suit the brutal votaries of Mars and Venus. But
our views, sir, are different altogether; we are going to teach wisdom
and benevolence to mankind. This is a heavenly work, sir, and our
minds ought to be heavenly. Now, as the mind depends greatly on the
body, and the body on the food, we should certainly select that which
is of the most pure and refining quality. And this, sir, is exactly
the food to our purpose. This mild potato, or this gentle pudding, is
the thing to insure the light stomach, the cool liver, the clear head,
and, above all, those celestial passions which become a preacher that
would moralize the world. And these celestial passions, sir, let me
add, though I don't pretend to be a prophet, these celestial passions,
sir, were you but to stick to this diet, would soon shine out in your
countenance with such apostolic majesty and grace, as would strike all
beholders with reverence, and enable you to carry the world before
you."
Such was the style of Ben's rhetoric with old Keimer. But it could not
all do. For though these harangues would sometimes make him fancy
himself as big as Zoroaster or Confucius, and talk as if he should
soon have the whole country running after him, and worshipping him for
the GREAT LAMA of the west; yet this divinity fit was too much against
the grain to last long. Unfortunately for poor Keimer, the kitchen lay
between him and his bishobprick: and both nature and habit had so
wedded him to that swinish idol, that nothing could divorce him. So
after having been led by Ben a "_very d----l of a life_," as he called
it, "_for three months_," his flesh-pot appetites prevailed, and he
swore, "_by his whiskers, he would suffer it no longer_." Accordingly
he ordered a nice roast pig for dinner, and desired Ben to invite a
young friend to dine with them. Ben did so: but neither himself nor
his young friend were any thing the better for the pig. For before
they could arrive, the pig being done, and his appetite beyond all
restraint, Keimer had fallen on it and devoured the whole. And there
he sat panting and torpid as an ANACONDA who had just swallowed a
young buffaloe. But still his looks gave sign that the "_Ministers of
Grace_" had not entirely deserted him, for at sight of Ben and his
young friend, he blushed up to the eye lids, and in a glow of scarlet,
which showed that he paid dear for his _whistle_, (gluttony) he
apologized for disappointing them of their dinner. "Indeed, the smell
of the pig," he said, "was so sweet, and the nicely browned skin so
inviting, especially to him who had been _long starved_, that for the
soul of him he could not resist the temptation to _taste it_--and
then, O! if Lucifer himself had been at the door, he must have gone
on, let what would have been the consequences." He said too, "that for
his part he was glad it was a _pig_ and not a _hog_, for that he
verily believed he should have bursted himself."--Then leaning back in
his chair and pressing his swollen abdomen with his paws, he exclaimed
with an awkward laugh, "_Well_, I don't believe I was ever cut out for
a bishop!"--Here ended the farce: for Keimer never after this uttered
another word about his NEW RELIGION.
Ben used, laughing, to say that he drew Keimer into this scrape that
he might enjoy the satisfaction of _starving him out of his gluttony_.
And he did it also that he might save the more _for books and
candles:_ their vegetable regimen costing him, in all, rather less
than three cents a day! To those who can spend twenty times this sum
on tobacco and whiskey alone, _three_ cents per day must appear a
scurvy allowance, and of course poor Ben must be sadly pitied. But
such philosophers should remember that all depends on our loves, whose
property it is to make bitter things sweet, and heavy things light.
For example: to lie out in the darksome swamp with no other canopy but
the sky, and no bed but the cold ground, and his only music the
midnight owl or screaming alligator, seems terrible to servile minds;
but it was joy to Marion, whose "_whole soul_," as general Lee well
observes, "_was devoted to liberty and country_."
So, to shut himself up in a dirty printing-office, with no dinner but
a bit of bread, no supper but an apple, must appear to every epicure
as it did to Keimer, "_a mere d----l of a life_;" but it was joy to
Ben, whose whole soul was on his _books_, as the sacred lamps that
were to guide him to usefulness and glory.
Happy he who early strikes into the path of _wisdom_, and bravely
walks therein till habit sprinkles it with roses. He shall be led as a
lamb among the green pastures along the water courses of pleasure, nor
shall he ever experience the pang of those
"Who see the right, and approve it too;
Condemn the wrong--and yet the wrong pursue."