We
therefore had many disputations. I used to work him so with my
Socratic method, and had trepanned him so often by questions
apparently so distant from any point we had in hand, yet by degrees
leading to the point and bringing him into difficulties and
contradictions, that at last he grew ridiculously cautious, and would
hardly answer me the most common question, without asking first, 'What
do you intend to infer from that?' However, it gave him so high an
opinion of my abilities in the confuting way, that he seriously
proposed my being his colleague in a project he had of setting up a
new sect. He was to preach the doctrines, and I was to confound all
opponents."
Benjamin found pleasant literary associates in Philadelphia. A gifted
young man usually attracts to himself bright young men near his age.
Such was the case with Benjamin. Three young men especially became his
boon companions, all of them great readers. Their literary tendencies
attracted Benjamin, though their characters were not deficient in high
aims and integrity. Their names were Charles Osborne, Joseph Matson,
and James Ralph. The first two were clerks of Charles Brockden, an
eminent conveyancer of the town, and the other was a merchant's clerk.
Matson was a pious young man of sterling integrity, while the others
were more lax in their religious opinions and principles.
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