“I don't remember anything of the kind,” said Bartley, languidly.
“Well, I don't know as I can. I just have a dim recollection of language thrown out at the object,—as old Matthew Arnold says. But it might have been something in Emerson.”
Bartley laughed “I didn't suppose you were such a reader, Kinney.”
“Oh, I nibble round wherever I can get a chance. Mostly in the newspapers, you know. I don't get any time for books, as a general rule. But there's pretty much everything in the papers. I should call beans a brain food.”
“I guess you call anything a brain food that you happen to like, don't you, Kinney?”
“No, sir,” said Kinney, soberly; “but I like to see the philosophy of a thing when I get a chance. Now, there's tea, for example,” he said, pointing to the great tin pot on the stove.
“Coffee, you mean,” said Bartley.
“No, sir, I mean tea. That's tea; and I give it to 'em three times a day, good and strong,—molasses in it, and no milk. That's a brain food, if ever there was one. Sets 'em up, right on end, every time. Clears their heads and keeps the cold out.”
“I should think you were running a seminary for young ladies, instead of a logging-camp,” said Bartley.
“No, but look at it: I'm in earnest about tea. You look at the tea drinkers and the coffee-drinkers all the world over! Look at 'em in our own country! All the Northern people and all the go-ahead people drink tea. The Pennsylvanians and the Southerners drink coffee. Why our New England folks don't even know how to make coffee so it's fit to drink! And it's just so all over Europe. The Russians drink tea, and they'd e't up those coffee-drinkin' Turks long ago, if the tea-drinkin' English hadn't kept 'em from it. Go anywheres you like in the North, and you find 'em drinkin' tea. The Swedes and Norwegians in Aroostook County drink it; and they drink it at home.”