"Won't you join me in a glass of wine, Job?" Mr. Seymour went on, observing his action. "You will sleep the better for it. No? Well, I won't urge you; but you will excuse me, I know, if I say it has always seemed strange to me that in this new country, where all save the pious tipple, and even they indulge sometimes behind the door, you should so rigidly abstain."
"It looks odd, I suppose," Uncle Job answered, "but you know it doesn't grow out of any assumption on my part. I simply don't care for liquor, and can't cultivate it, for the same reason you give for my not marrying; I haven't the time."
"Well, that is a clever way to put it," Mr. Seymour responded. "You are all the better, though, for being free. I have been used to the custom since a boy, and so it would seem odd to dine without wine of some kind. It is all a matter of habit, however, and in this new country, where any kind of good liquor is hard to get, it is better to eschew it altogether, as you do, if one can. Many reprobate the use of wine, I know, but that is an extreme way to look at it, for it is as old as man, and so not to be criticised as if the fashion were new."
"Custom never makes a bad practice the better, though it may excuse it," Uncle Job answered, good-naturedly.
"No, but it is the excesses of those who use liquor that should be condemned; but there doesn't seem to be any middle course in most cases."
"That is not the only thing that is carried to excess in our new country," Uncle Job answered. "The habit of chewing tobacco is quite as harmful, and one that ought to be frowned upon by all men with the beating of drums and tom-toms. This for sanitary reasons, if for no other."
"That is as men think," Mr. Seymour, who was sometimes disposed to be very democratic, replied. "The custom is not nice, but it will die out when men live nearer each other and have leisure to observe the habits of their neighbors. Our people are not more peculiar in this than in giving up the pipe for the cigar."
"That was bad taste, for a pipe is every way superior to a cigar. It is more cleanly and costs less and is not so harmful," Uncle Job replied, with animation; for however abstemious he might be in regard to the use of liquor, he was seldom without a pipe or cigar in his mouth.
"The pipe will come into fashion again when men have more leisure," Mr. Seymour answered. "Now they have scarce time to bite off the end of a cigar or say 'Lord forgive me!' ere they die, so busy are they in bringing the new world into subjection. However, to talk about something of more interest to these children, what are you going to do next? What are your plans, Job, if I may ask?"
This reference to the future caused both Constance and me to stop our chatter and lean forward not to lose a word of what was said, but little comfort did we derive from Uncle Job's reply.