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.

"Sir," said he, with the voice and mien of an apostle, "I perceive that
thou art in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity. Thy money
perish with thee. The God of this world hath blinded thine eyes."

The quack, who now began to take a humorous view of the innocence of the
youth, burst into a boisterous guffaw.

"Well, well," he said in mingled scorn and pity, "reckon you are more to
be pitied than b-b-blamed. Fault of early education! Talk like a
p-p-parrot! What can a young fellow like you know about life, shut up
here in this seven-by-nine valley, like a man in a b-b-barrel looking
out of the b-b-bung-hole?"