said he, "I wonder why you should. You were there, you know, but a
few days ago, and unless you had business with them, don't you think
it will look oddly?"--I said, "I thought not."--"I doubt," said he,
"you'll tire them with your company, and make them think they shall
be troubled with you."--"If," replied I, "I find anything of that,
I'll make the shorter stay."--"But," said he, "can you propose any
sort of business with them, more than a mere visit?"--"Yes," said I,
"I propose to myself not only to see them, but to have some
discourse with them."--"Why," said he, in a tone a little harsher,
"I hope you don't incline to be of their way."--"Truly," answered I,
"I like them and their way very well, so far as I yet understand it;
and I am willing to go to them that I may understand it better."

Thereupon he began to reckon up a beadroll of faults against the
Quakers, telling me they were a rude, unmannerly people, that would
not give civil respect or honour to their superiors, no not to
magistrates; that they held many dangerous principles; that they
were an immodest shameless people; and that one of them stripped
himself stark naked, and went in that unseemly manner about the
streets, at fairs and on market days, in great towns.

To all the other charges I answered only, "That perhaps they might
be either misreported or misunderstood, as the best of people had
sometimes been." But to the last charge of going naked, a
particular answer, by way of instance, was just then brought into my
mind and put into my mouth, which I had not thought of before, and
that was the example of Isaiah, who went naked among the people for
a long time (Isaiah xx. 4). "Ay," said my father, "but you must
consider that he was a prophet of the Lord, and had an express
command from God to go so."