upon me; the occasion thereof was this: My father, having been in
his younger years, more especially while he lived in London, a
constant hearer of those who are called Puritan preachers, had
stored up a pretty stock of Scripture knowledge, did sometimes (not
constantly, nor very often) cause his family to come together on a
first day in the evening, and expound a chapter to them, and pray.
His family now, as well as his estate, was lessened; for my mother
was dead, my brother gone, and my elder sister at London; and having
put off his husbandry, he had put off with it most of his servants,
so that he had now but one man- and one maid-servant. It so fell
out that on a first-day night he bade my sister, who sat with him in
the parlour, call in the servants to prayer.

Whether this was done as a trial upon me or no, I know not, but a
trial it proved to me; for they, loving me very well and disliking
my father's carriage to me, made no haste to go in, but stayed a
second summons. This so offended him that when at length they did
go in, he, instead of going to prayer, examined them why they came
not in when they were first called; and the answer they gave him
being such as rather heightened than abated his displeasure, he with
an angry tone said: "Call in that fellow" (meaning me, who was left
alone in the kitchen), "for he is the cause of all this." They, as
they were backward to go in themselves, so were not forward to call
me in, fearing the effect of my father's displeasure would fall upon
me, as soon it did, for I, hearing what was said, and not staying
for the call, went in of myself. And as soon as I was come in, my
father discharged his displeasure on me in very sharp and bitter
expressions, which drew from me (in the grief of my heart, to see
him so transported with passion) these few words: "They that can
pray with such a spirit, let them; for my part, I cannot." With