"I must be after finding a boarding place," said Benjamin to the owner of the boat, as he was about leaving. "I do not know where to go any more than the man in the moon. Are you acquainted here?"
"Scarcely at all; could not be of any service to you any way on that line," the owner answered. "Goin' to stop some time in Philadelphy?"
"I am going to live here if I can find work, as I expect to, and become a citizen of this town."
"Wall, you'll make a good one, I know. May you never have reason to repent of your choice. Goodbye."
"Good-bye"; and Benjamin walked up the street again. The people were on their way to meeting, so that he was reminded of divine worship, which he had partially forsaken in Boston. Being very tired, in consequence of a hard time on the boat and a wakeful night, he concluded to follow the people to church. They entered a large old-fashioned meeting-house, and he followed them and took a seat near the door. His appearance attracted much attention, as his dress was not exactly that of a Quaker, and otherwise he was not quite of the Quaker type; and it was a Quaker church in which he was. But he wasted no thoughts upon his apparel, and did not stop to think or care whether he was arrayed in shoddy or fine linen.
Whether he did not know that he was in a Quaker congregation, or knowing that fact, was ignorant of the Quaker worship, does not appear; but he waited for something to be said. While waiting for this, he dropped into a sound sleep, and slept through the entire service, and would have slept on, and been fastened into the meeting-house, had not the sexton discovered him.
"Hulloo, stranger! Meeting's over; going to shut up the house," shouted the sexton, shaking the sleeper thoroughly.
"I was very tired," responded Benjamin, trying to get his eyes open.
"I was on the boat last night and got no sleep."
"Where did you come from?"
"Boston; I came here for work."