"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.