On hearing the outlines of this new religion, Ben found great fault with it. This he did only that he might have another frolic with Keimer; but his frolics were praiseworthy, for they all "leaned to virtue's side." The truth is, he saw that Keimer was prodigiously a hypocrite. At every whip-stitch he could play the knave, and then for a pretence would read his Bible. But it was not the _moral part_ of the Bible, the sweet precepts and parables of the Gospel that he read. No verily. Food so angelic was not at all to the tooth of his childish fancy, which delighted in nothing but the _novel_ and _curious_. Like too many of the saints now-a-days, he would rather read about the WITCH OF ENDOR, than the GOOD SAMARITAN, and hear a sermon on the _brazen candlesticks_ than on the LOVE OF GOD. And then, O dear! who was Melchizedeck? Or where was the land of Nod? Or, was it in the shape of a _serpent or a monkey_ that the devil tempted Eve? As he was one day poring over the pentateuch as busy after some nice game of this sort as a terrier on the track of a weazle, he came to that famous text where Moses says, "_thou shall not mar the corners of thy beard_." Aye! this was the divinity for Keimer. It struck him like a new light from the clouds: then rolling his eyes as from an apparition, he exclaimed, "miserable man that I am! and was I indeed forbidden to mar even the corners of my beard, and have I been all this time shaving myself as smooth as an eunuch! Fire and brimstone, how have you been boiling up for me, and I knew it not! Hell, deepest hell is my portion, that's a clear case, unless I reform. And reform I will if I live. Yes, my poor naked chin, if ever I but get another crop upon thee and I suffer it to be touched by the ungodly steel, then let my right hand forget her cunning." From that day he became as shy of a razor as ever Samson was. His long black whiskers "_whistled in the wind_." And then to see how he would stand up before his glass and stroke them down, it would have reminded you of some ancient Druid, adjusting the _sacred Mistletoe_. Ben could not bear that sight. Such shameless neglect of angel morality, and yet such fidgetting about a goatish beard! "Heavens, sir," said he to Keimer, one day in the midst of a hot argument, "Who can think, with common sense, A smooth shaved face gives God offence? Or that a whisker hath a charm, Eternal justice to disarm?" He even proposed to him to get _shaved_. Keimer swore outright that he would never lose his beard. A stiff altercation ensued. But Keimer getting angry, Ben agreed at last to give up the beard. He said that, "as the beard at best was but an external, a mere excrescence, he would not insist on that as so very essential. But certainly sir," continued he, "there is one thing that is." Keimer wanted to know what that was.