“But it is rather a good thing, or a series of good things, not to play cards, nor smoke, nor tell lies,” remarked Wilkinson.  “Perhaps the baby is too young to smoke or read Shakespeare.”

“He’s eighteen and a strapping big fellow at that, our baby Rufus.  He can do two men’s work in a day all the week through, and go to meetin’ and Sunday school on Sundays; but he’s far behind in general larnin’ and in spirit, not a bit like his father.  Do I understand you object to smoking, sir?”

“Not a bit,” replied his companion, “but my friend Coristine smokes a pipe, and, as smokers love congenial company, I had better get him to join you, and relieve him of his load.”  So saying, Wilkinson retired to the silent pair in the rear, took the old lady’s bundle from the lawyer and sent him forward to smoke with the ancient schoolmaster.  The latter waxed eloquent on the subject of tobackka, after the pipes were filled and fairly set agoing.

“There was a fanatic of a praycher came to our meetin’ one Sunday morning last winter, and discoorsed on that which goeth out of a man.  He threeped down our throats that it was tobackka, and that it was the root of bitterness, and the tares among the wheat, which was not rightly translated in our English Bible.  He said using tobackka was the foundation of all sin, and that, if you counted up the letters in the Greek tobakko, because Greek has no c, the number would be 483, and, if you add 183 to that, it would make 666, the mark of the Beast; and, says he, any man that uses tobackka is a beast!  It was a powerful sarmon, and everybody was looking at everybody else.  When the meetin’ was over, I met Andrew Hislop, a Sesayder, and I said to him, ‘Annerew!’ says I, ’what do you think of that blast?  Must we give up the pipe or be Christians no more?’ Says Andrew, ‘Come along wi’ me,’ and I went to his house and he took down a book off a shelf in his settin’ room.  ’Look at this, Mr. Hill,’ says he, ‘you that have the book larnin’, ’tis written by these godly Sesayders, Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, and is poetry.’  I took the book and read the piece, and what do you think it was?”

“Charles Lamb’s farewell to tobacco,” said Coristine wildly:—­

Brother of Bacchus, later born,
The Old World were sure forlorn,
Wanting thee.

’No, sir; it was a ‘Gospel Sonnet on Tobackka and Pipes’; pipes, mind you, as well—­all about this Indian weed, and the pipe which is so lily white.  Oh, sir, it was most improvin’.  And that fanatic of a praycher, not fit to blacken the Erskines’ shoes, even if they were Sesayders!  I went home and I says, ‘Rufus, my son,’ and he says, ‘Yes, fayther!’ Says I, ’Rufus, am I a Christian man, though frail and human, am I a Christian man or am I not?’ Rufus says, ‘You are a Christian, fayther.’  Then says I, ‘What is the praycher, Rufus, my boy?’ and Rufus, that uses tobackka in no shape nor form, says, ’He’s a consayted, ignerant, bigitted bladderskite of a Pharisee!’ Sir, I was proud of that boy!’