“Seeing is useful at times, I acknowledge; but I knows this, that if a man could pull a young couple about the river, and not be able to see now and then, it would be many a half-crown in his pocket.”
“Well, then, now we come to tasting.”
“No use at all—only a vexation. If there was no tasting we should not care whether we ate brown bread or roast beef, drank water or XX ale; and in these hard times that would be no small saving.”
“Well, then, let me see, there’s smelling.”
“Smelling’s no use whatever. For one good smell by the river’s side there be ten nasty ones; and there is everywhere, to my conviction.”
“Which is the next, Jacob?” said Mary, smiling archly.
“Feeling.”
“Feeling! that’s the worst of the whole. Always feel too cold in winter, too hot in summer—feel a blow too; feeling only gives pain; that’s a very bad sense.”
“Well, then, I suppose you think we should get on better without our senses.”
“No, not without all of them. A little hearing and a little seeing be all very well; but there are other senses which you have forgot, Jacob. Now, one I takes to be the very best of the bunch is smoking.”