the
difference was rather apparent than real.

"These people," said he, "belong to a sect of Ascetics in this country,
who are persuaded that all pleasure received through the senses is sinful,
and that man never appears so acceptable in the sight of the Deity, as
when he rejects all the delicacies of the palate, as well as other
sensual gratifications, and imposes on himself that food to which he
feels naturally most repugnant. You may see that those peaches, which
were so disdainfully thrown into the yard, are often secretly picked up
by the children, who obey the impulses of nature, and devour them most
greedily. Even in the old people themselves, there is occasionally some
backsliding into the depravity of worldly appetite. You might have
perceived, that while the old man was abusing the wine you drank as
unripe, and making wry faces at it, he still kept tasting it; and if I
had not reached it to you, he would probably, before he had ceased his
meditations, have finished half the bottle. It must be confessed, that
although religion cherishes our best feelings, it also often proves a
cloak for the worst."

I told him that our clergy were superior to this weakness, most of them
manifesting a proper sense of the bounty of Providence, by eating and
drinking of the best, (not very sparingly neither); and that in New-York,
we considered some of our preachers the best judges of wine among us. Soon
afterwards, we again sallied forth in quest of adventures, and bent our
course towards the suburbs.

We had not gone far, before we saw several persons looking at a man
working hard at a forge, in a low crazy building. On approaching him, we
found he was engaged in making nails, an operation which he performed
with great skill and adroitness; and as soon as he had made as many
as he could take up in his hand at once, he carried them behind his
little hovel, and dropped them into a narrow deep well. Some of the
by-standers wished to beg a few of what he seemed to value so lightly,
and others offered to give him bread or clothes in exchange for his
nails, but he obstinately resisted all their applications; in fact,
little heeding them, although he was almost naked, had a starved, haggard
appearance, and evidently regarded the food they proffered with a
wishful eye.

The lookers on told us the blacksmith had been for years engaged in this
business of nail-making; he worked with little intermission, scarcely
allowing himself tim