{"id":"01KG8AK8NX4ZHRXEN1C3EN813N","cid":"bafkreif53znc23v4gmlqhf6ly2h3hfo5fejogwqojam2477gbdgqoa7ati","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7575,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.725Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":7504,"text":"the ashes. The other, gray, with wrinkled surface, in the likeness of a\r\nwasp's nest, was the match-box. \"There,\" said the stranger, pushing over\r\nthe cigar-stand, \"help yourself, and I will touch you off,\" taking a\r\nmatch. \"Nothing like tobacco,\" he added, when the fumes of the cigar\r\nbegan to wreathe, glancing from the smoker to the pottery, \"I will have\r\na Virginia tobacco-plant set over my grave beside the Catawba vine.\"\r\n\r\n\"Improvement upon your first idea, which by itself was good--but you\r\ndon't smoke.\"\r\n\r\n\"Presently, presently--let me fill your glass again. You don't drink.\"\r\n\r\n\"Thank you; but no more just now. Fill _your_ glass.\"\r\n\r\n\"Presently, presently; do you drink on. Never mind me. Now that it\r\nstrikes me, let me say, that he who, out of superfine gentility or\r\nfanatic morality, denies himself tobacco, suffers a more serious\r\nabatement in the cheap pleasures of life than the dandy in his iron\r\nboot, or the celibate on his iron cot. While for him who would fain\r\nrevel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing at which philanthropists\r\nmust weep, to see such an one, again and again, madly returning to the\r\ncigar, which, for his incompetent stomach, he cannot enjoy, while still,\r\nafter each shameful repulse, the sweet dream of the impossible good\r\ngoads him on to his fierce misery once more--poor eunuch!\"\r\n\r\n\"I agree with you,\" said the cosmopolitan, still gravely social, \"but\r\nyou don't smoke.\"\r\n\r\n\"Presently, presently, do you smoke on. As I was saying about----\"\r\n\r\n\"But _why_ don't you smoke--come. You don't think that tobacco, when in\r\nleague with wine, too much enhances the latter's vinous quality--in\r\nshort, with certain constitutions tends to impair self-possession, do\r\nyou?\"\r\n\r\n\"To think that, were treason to good fellowship,\" was the warm\r\ndisclaimer. \"No, no. But the fact is, there is an unpropitious flavor in\r\nmy mouth just now. Ate of a diabolical ragout at dinner, so I shan't\r\nsmoke till I have washed away the lingering memento of it with wine. But\r\nsmoke away, you, and pray, don't forget to drink. By-the-way, while we\r\nsit here so companionably, giving loose to any companionable nothing,\r\nyour uncompanionable friend, Coonskins, is, by pure contrast, brought\r\nto recollection. If he were but here now, he would see how much of real\r\nheart-joy he denies himself by not hob-a-nobbing with his kind.\"\r\n\r\n\"Why,\" with loitering emphasis, slowly withdrawing his cigar, \"I thought\r\nI had undeceived you there. I thought you had come to a better\r\nunderstanding of my eccentric friend.\"\r\n\r\n\"Well, I thought so, too; but first impressions will return, you know.\r\nIn truth, now that I think of it, I am led to conjecture from chance\r\nthings which dropped from Coonskins, during the little interview I had\r\nwith him, that he is not a Missourian by birth, but years ago came West\r\nhere, a young misanthrope from the other side of the Alleghanies, less\r\nto make his fortune, than to flee man. Now, since they say trifles\r\nsometimes effect great results, I shouldn't wonder, if his history were\r\nprobed, it would be found that what first indirectly gave his sad bias\r\nto Coonskins was his disgust at reading in boyhood the advice of\r\nPolonius to Laertes--advice which, in the selfishness it inculcates, is\r\nalmost on a par with a sort of ballad upon the economies of\r\nmoney-making, to be occasionally seen pasted against the desk of small\r\nretail traders in New England.\"\r\n\r\n\"I do hope now, my dear fellow,\" said the cosmopolitan with an air of\r\nbland protest, \"that, in my presence at least, you will throw out\r\nnothing to the prejudice of the sons of the Puritans.\"\r\n\r\n\"Hey-day and high times indeed,\" exclaimed the other, nettled, \"sons of\r\nthe Puritans forsooth! And who be Puritans, that I, an Alabamaian, must\r\ndo them reverence? A set of sourly conceited old Malvolios, whom\r\nShakespeare laughs his fill at in his comedies.\"\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJMV9MSRGN5AE81C6QV95","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AK8NCEGPYBNMWZVRBXSWY","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AK8NXX1R912C5CXKHJS1C","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:58.653Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:12.515Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}