n
old Scotch wife that spent her time tayching the childer Scott, and
Pollok's 'Course of Time,' and old Scotch ballads like that Packman one
she was reciting to your friend. Now, I larnt my boys and gyurls, when I
was school tayching, some pieces of Shakespeare, and got them to declaim
at the school exhibitions before the holidays. I minded some of them
after I was married, and, one day when it was raining hard, I declaimed
a lovely piece before Persis, that's the mistress' name, when the woman
began to cry, and fell on her knees by the old settle, and prayed like a
born praycher. She thought I had gone out of my mind; so, after that, I
had to keep Shakespeare to myself. Sometimes I've seen Tryphosa take up
the book and read a bit, but Rufus, that's the baby, is just like his
mother--he'll neither play a card, nor read a play, nor smoke, nor tell
lies. I dunno what to do with the boy at all, at all."

"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! I