get
yourself ready to go with Annis;" which was the annual ship, and the
only one at that time usually passing between London and Philadelphia.
But it would be some months before Annis sail'd, so I continued
working with Keimer, fretting about the money Collins had got from me,
and in daily apprehensions of being call'd upon by Vernon, which,
however, did not happen for some years after.

I believe I have omitted mentioning that, in my first voyage from
Boston, being becalm'd off Block Island, our people set about catching
cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution
of not eating animal food, and on this occasion I consider'd, with my
master Tryon, the taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder,
since none of them had, or ever could do us any injury that might
justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had
formerly been a great lover of fish, and, when this came hot out of
the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between
principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were
opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought
I, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you." So I
din'd upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people,
returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So
convenient a thing is it to be a _reasonable creature_, since it
enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to
do.

V

EARLY FRIENDS IN PHILADELPHIA

Keimer and I liv'd on a pretty good familiar footing, and agreed
tolerably well, for he suspected nothing of my setting up. He retained
a great deal of his old enthusiasms and lov'd argumentation. We
therefore had many disputations. I used to work him so with my
Socratic method, and had trepann'd him so often by questions
apparently so distant from any point we had in hand, and yet by
degrees led to the point, and brought him into difficulties and
contradictions, that at last he grew ridiculously cautious, and would
hardly answer me the most common question, without asking first,
"_What do you intend to infer from that_?" However, it gave him so
high an opinion of my abilities in the confuting way, that he
seriously proposed my being his colleague in a project he had of
setting up a new sect. He was to preach the doctrines, and I was to
confound all opponents. When he came to explain with me upon the
doctrine