At length, they began to examine me with respect to
the company I kept, as I absented myself from home day after
day. I told them I kept company only with one young gentleman,
whose whole manner of thinking on religious subjects I found so
congenial with my own that I could not live out of his society.
My mother began to lay down some of her old hackneyed rules of
faith, but I turned from hearing her with disgust; for, after the
energy of my new friend's reasoning, hers appeared so tame I
could not endure it. And I confess with shame that my reverend
preceptor's religious dissertations began, about this time, to lose
their relish very much, and by degrees became exceedingly
tiresome to my ear. They were so inferior, in strength and
sublimity, to the most common observations of my young friend
that in drawing a comparison the former appeared as nothing. He,
however, examined me about many things relating to my
companion, in all of which I satisfied him, save in one: I could
neither tell him who my friend was, what was his name, nor of
whom he was descended; and I wondered at myself how I had
never once adverted to such a thing for all the time we had been
intimate.
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