“Men call me,” he said, “Jehu Judd, and when to home, I live in Quaco in New Brunswick.”
I was glad of that, because it warn’t possible the critter could know anything of me, and I wanted to draw him out.
“And what does thee want, friend?” I said.
“I come to trade with you, to sell you fifty barrels of mackerel, and to procure some nets for the fishery, and some manufactures, commonly called domestics.”
“Verily,” sais I, “thee hast an odd way of opening a trade, methinks, friend Judd. Shaking quakers dance piously, as thee mayest have heard, and dost thee think thy conduct seemly? What mayest thee be, friend?”
“A trader,” he replied.
“Art thee not a fisher of men, friend, as well as a fisher of fish?”
“I am a Christian man,” he said, “of the sect called ‘come-outers,’1 and have had experience, and when I meet the brethren, sometimes I speak a word in season.”
1 Come-outers. This name has been applied to a considerable number of persons in various parts of the Northern States, principally in New England, who have recently come out of the various religious denominations with which they have been connected; hence the name. They have not themselves assumed any distinctive organization. They have no creed, believing that every one should be left free to hold such opinions on religious subjects as he pleases, without being held accountable for the same to any human authority—Bartlett’s Americanisms.
“Well, friend, thee has spoken thy words out of season tonight,” I said.