occasion.  The admirable presence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced to this imposed self-watchfulness—­if it did not seem rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock of religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, under trials and racking examinations.  “You will never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions till midnight,” said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety.  “Thereafter as the answers may be,” retorted the Quaker.  The astonishing composure of this people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter instances.—­I was travelling in a stagecoach with three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest non-conformity of their sect.  We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us.  My friends confined themselves to the tea-table.  I in my way took supper.  When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my companions discovered that she had charged for both meals.  This was resisted.  Mine hostess was very clamorous and positive.  Some mild arguments were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient.  The guard came in with his usual peremptory notice.  The Quakers pulled out their money, and formally tendered it.—­so much for tea—­I, in humble imitation, tendering mine—­for the supper which I had taken.  She would not relax in her demand.  So they all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages.  We got in.  The steps went up.  The coach drove off.  The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time inaudible—­and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope that some justification would be offered by these serious persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct.  To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the subject.  They sate as mute as at a meeting.  At length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neighbour, “Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India House?” and the question operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter.

[Footnote 1:  I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imperfect sympathies.  To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipathy.  There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them.  I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly fighting.