You are
the only one in the crowd who can't take care of himself."
Benjamin was rather severe, but then he had endured insult and
ingratitude so long from his old friend, that his patience was
exhausted. The outcome of this scrape on the Delaware Benjamin shall
tell in his own words:
"We hardly exchanged a civil word after this adventure. At length a
West India captain, who had a commission to procure a preceptor for
the sons of a gentleman at Barbadoes, met with him and proposed to
carry him thither to fill the situation. He accepted, and promised to
remit what he owed me out of the first money he should receive; but I
never heard of him after."
Probably he died, a miserable sot, in Barbadoes, without a friend to
mark his grave or write the story of his shame. Benjamin lost, of
course, all the money he had loaned him. In later life he referred to
the end of John Collins, and said that he (Benjamin) received
retribution for his influence over Collins, when he made him as much
of a skeptic as himself in Boston. It was there that he unsettled his
mind as to the reality of religion. At that time he was industrious,
temperate, and honest. But, losing his respect for religion, he was
left without restraint and went rapidly to ruin. Benjamin was the
greatest sufferer by his fall, and thus was terribly rebuked for
influencing him to treat religion with contempt.
Pages:
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359