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A friendship was formed between them, which continued as long as the captain lived.
The clergyman on board afterward said to Friend Hopper, ‘If any other person had talked to him in that manner, he would have knocked him down.’
In about two hours, the vessel floated off the sandbar and went safely into the harbor of New-York.
At the custom-house, the clergyman was in some perplexity about a large quantity of books he had brought with him, on which it was proposed to charge high duties.
‘Perhaps I can get them through for thee,’ said Friend Hopper.
‘I will try.’
He went up to the officer, and said, ‘Isn't it a rule of the custom-house not to charge a man for the tools of his trade?’
He replied that it was. ‘Then thou art bound to let this priest's books pass free,’ rejoined the Friend.
‘Preaching is the trade he gets his living by; and these books are the tools he must use.’
The clergyman being aware of Quaker views with regard to a paid ministry, seemed doubtful whether to be pleased or not, with such a mode of helping him out of difficulty.
However, he took the joke as good naturedly as it was offered, and the books passed free, on the assurance that they were all for his own library.
Friend Hopper's bookstore in New-York was a place of great resort for members of his own sect.
His animated style of conversation, his thousand
Boston, J. P. Jewett and Company; Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor and Worthington; London; Low and Company, 1854.
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