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 it is to be a reasonable creature, since 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
cost