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"Ben Franklin"
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography: Page 30
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it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
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 lead 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 doctrines, I found several
conundrums which I objected to, unless I might have my way a little too, and
introduce some of mine.
Keimer wore his beard at full length, because somewhere in the Mosaic law it is
said, "Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard." He likewise kept the
Seventh day, Sabbath; and these two points were essentials with him. I dislik'd
both; but agreed to admit them upon condition of his adopting the doctrine of
using no animal food. "I doubt," said he, "my constitution will not bear that."
I assur'd him it would, and that he would be the better for it. He was usually a
great glutton, and I promised myself some diversion in half starving him. He
agreed to try the practice, if I would keep him company. I did so, and we held
it for three months. We had our victuals dress'd, and brought to us regularly by
a woman in the neighborhood, who had from me a list of forty dishes to be
prepar'd for us at different times, in all which there was neither fish, flesh,
nor fowl, and the whim suited me the better at this time from the cheapness of
it, not costing us above eighteenpence sterling each per week. I have since kept
several Lents most strictly, leaving the common diet for that, and that for the
common, abruptly, without the least inconvenience, so that I think there is
little in the advice of making those changes by easy gradations. I went on
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