Why, I s’pose some poor men chew enough of this stuff,—chew it jest to spit it out agin,—and smoke it,—draw the smoke into their mouth jest to blow it out agin,—why, I s’pose this proceedin’ costs ’em enough in ten or fifteen years to buy ’em a good little home. And there they are willin’ to live and die homeless, themselves and them they love, jest for looks, jest to try to look pretty.
For it must be for that. It can’t be for health, for doctors say it hurts the health awfully, makes folks weak and nervious, and sometimes leads to blindness and fits.
It hain’t for morals, for folks say, and stick to it, that it makes ’em totter. Weakens a man’s moral nature, his social and religious faculties, gives him a taste for the stronger stimulent of intoxicatin’ drinks, and so leads him down to ruin gradual.
No, it hain’t for the morals. I have most probable hit on the right reason. But good land! where the beauty is in it I can’t see. But I am a episodin’ fearfully.
As I was a sayin’, this man, instead of beautifyin’ himself with it, had jest spilte the looks of his whiskers, in my eye. They looked yeller and nasty. And the sides of his mouth was all streaked with it. In some places it was sort o’ dried on. He looked to me as if it would do him good to put him asoak in weak lye, and let him lay in it 2 or 3 days till he got sweetened and cleansed.
His eyes was light-colored, and the lids was swelled and inflamed like. His mouth was drawed down into a dretful sanctimonious pucker; he had a awful big chew of tobacco in his mouth, and so it wasn’t all hypocracy that drawed it down; it was probable about half and half—half hypocracy and half tobacco. And under all the other expressions of his face was a dissipated, bad look. I didn’t like his looks a mite. But there he stood a kinder hangin’ onto the table (I found out afterwards that he had been drinkin’ all the hard cider he could to old Bobbet’ses).
He asked me, in a kind of a thick voice, for Josiah. And I, thinkin’ it was some one on business, asked him in a polite tone, though cool, “if he wouldn’t take a chair and set down.”
“I would,” says he, in that thick, husky voice, “I would set down, mum, but I am afraid if I should I couldn’t get up agin.”
And he looked at me in a curious, strange way; dretful wise, and yet foolish like.
Says I, gazin’ sternly at him: “I am afraid you have been a drinkin’, sir.”