David bowed and blushed.

“I came over to make you a p-p-proposition.  Want you to yoke up with me, and help me sell the ‘B-B-Balm of the Blessed Islands.’  You can do the t-t-talking and I’ll run the b-b-business; see?”

He put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, spread his feet apart, squared himself and smiled like a king who had offered his throne to a beggar.

David regarded him with a look of astonishment.

“What do you s-s-say?”

Gravely, placidly, the young Quaker answered:  “I thank thee, friend, for what thee evidently means as a kindness, but I must decline thy offer.”

“Decline my offer?  Are you c-c-crazy?  Why do you d-d-decline my offer?”

“Because I have no wish to leave my home and work.”

Although his answer was addressed to the man, his eyes were directed to the woman.  His reply, simple and natural enough, astounded the quack.

“What!” he exclaimed.  “Do you mean that you p-p-prefer to stay in this p-p-pigstye of a town to becoming a citizen of the g-g-great world?”

“I do.”

“But listen; I will pay you more money in a single month than you can earn by d-d-driving your plow through that b-b-black mud for a whole year.”

“I have no need and no desire for more money than I can earn by daily toil.”

“No need and no desire for money!  B-b-bah!  You are not talking to sniveling old women and crack-b-b-brained old men; but to a f-f-feller who can see through a two-inch plank, and you can’t p-p-pass off any of your religious d-d-drivel on him, either.”

This coarse insult went straight to the soul of the youth.  His blood tingled in his veins.  There was a tightening around his heart of something which was out of place in the bosom of a Quaker.  A hot reply sprang to his lips, but died away as he glanced at the woman, and saw her face mantled with an angry flush.

Calmed by her silent sympathy, he quietly replied:  “Friend, I have no desire to annoy thee, but I have been taught that ’the love of money is the root of all evil,’ and believing as I do I could not answer thee otherwise than I did.”

It was evident from the look upon the countenance of the quack that he had met with a new and incomprehensible type of manhood.  He gazed at the Quaker a moment in silence and then exclaimed, “Young man, you may mean what you say, b-b-but you have been most infernally abused by the p-p-people who have put such notions in your head, for there is only one substantial and abiding g-g-good on earth, and that is money.  Money is power, money is happiness, money is God; get money! get it anywhere! get it anyhow, but g-g-get it.”

Instead of mere resentment for a personal insult, David now felt a tide of righteous indignation rising in his soul at this scorn and denial of those eternal principles of truth and duty which he felt to be the very foundations of the moral universe.