But our youthful hero is in too interesting a part of the play for us to lose a moment's sight of him; so after this short moral we turn our eyes on him again, as there, loaded with his bundles and his bread, and eating and gazing and turning the corners of the streets, he goes on without indeed knowing where he is going. At length, however, just as he had finished his first roll, his reverie was broken up by finding himself on Market-street wharf, and close to the very boat in which he had come from Burlington. The sight of the silver stream, as it whirled in dimpling eddies around the wharf, awakened his thirst; so stepping into the boat he took a hearty draught, which, to his unvitiated palate, tasted sweeter than ever did mint-sling to any young drunkard. Close by him in the boat sat a poor woman with a little ragged girl leaning on her lap. He asked her if she had breakfasted. With a sallow smile of hunger hoping relief, she replied _no_, for that she had nothing to eat. Upon this he gave her both his other loaves. At sight of this welcome supply of food, the poor woman and her child gave him a look which he never afterwards forgot.
Having given, as we have seen, a tythe of his money in gratitude to the poor boatman, and two thirds of his bread in charity to this poor woman and her child, Ben skipped again upon the wharf, and with a heart light and gay with conscious duty, a second time took up Market-street, which was now getting to be full of well-dressed people all going the same way. He cut in, and following the line of march, was thus insensibly led to a large Quaker meeting-house. Sans ceremonie, he pushed in and sat down with the rest, and looking around him soon felt the _motions_, if not of a devout, yet of a pleasantly thoughtful spirit. It came to his recollection to have heard that people must go abroad to see strange things. And here it seemed to be verified. _What, no pulpit! Whoever saw a meeting-house before without a pulpit?_ He could not for his life conceive where the preacher was to stand. But his attention was quickly turned from the meeting-house to the congregation, whose appearance, particularly that of the young females, delighted him exceedingly. Such simplicity of dress with such an air of purity and neatness! He had never seen any thing like it before, and yet all admirably suited to the gentle harmony of their looks. And then their eyes! for meekness and sweetness of expression, they looked like dove's eyes. With a deep sigh he wished that his brother James and many others in Boston were but gentle and good as these people appeared to be. Young as he was, he thought the world would be a great deal the happier for it. As leaning back he indulged these soothing sentiments, without any sound of singing or preaching to disturb him, and tired nature's soft languors stealing over him too, he sunk insensibly into sleep. We are not informed that he was visited during his slumber, by any of those benevolent spirits who once descended in the dreams of the youthful patriarch, as he slept in the pleasant plains of Bethel. But he tells us himself, that he was visited by one of that benevolent sect in whose place of worship he had been overtaken by sleep. Waked by some hand on his shoulder that gently shook him, he opened his eyes, and lo! a female countenance about middle age and of enchanting sweetness, was smiling on him. Roused to a recollection of the impropriety he had been guilty of, he was too much confused to speak; but his reddened cheeks told her what he felt. But he had nothing to fear. Gently shaking her head, though without a frown, and with a voice of music, she said to him "_My son, thee ought not to sleep in meeting._" Then giving him the look of a mother as she went out, she bade him farewell. He followed her as well as he could, and left the meeting-house much mortified at having been caught asleep in it; but deriving at the same time great pleasure from this circumstance, because it had furnished opportunity to the good Quaker lady to give him that _motherly look_. He felt it sweetly melting along his soul as he walked. _O how different, thought he, that look from the looks which my brother and the council men of Boston gave me, though I was younger then and more an object of sympathy!_