my folly on the wharf--saw how I forgot myself?"

"Ach!" said Schmidt, who had toiled after us hot and red, and who now
slipped his quaint form in between us--"Ach! 'You forgot yourself.' This
say you. I do think you did remember your true self for a time this
morning."

"Hush! I am a man ashamed. Let us talk no more of it. I have ill kept my
faith," returned Wholesome impatiently.

"You may believe God doth not honor an honest man," said Schmidt; "which
is perhaps a God Quaker, not the God I see to myself."

I had so far kept my peace, noting the bitter self-reproach of
Wholesome, and having a lad's shyness before an older man's calamity;
but now I said indignantly, "If it be Friends' creed to see the poor and
old and feeble hurt without raising a hand, let us pray to be saved from
such religion."

"But," said Wholesome, "I should have spoken to him in kindness first.
Now I have only made of him a worse beast, and taught him more hatred.
And he of all men!"

"There is much salvation in some mistakes," said Schmidt smiling.

Just then we were stopped by two middle-aged Friends in drab of orthodox
tint, from which now-a-days Friends have much fallen away into gay
browns and blacks. They asked a question or two about an insurance on
one of our ships; and then the elder said, "Thee hand seems bleeding,
friend Richard;" which was true: he had cut his knuckles on his