Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/764

ÆT. 63] duction of tea and coffee: the latter drink the Icelanders are now much addicted to.

"If I were to say what I really think I should say that tobacco seems to me a more dangerous intoxicant than liquors, because people can and do smoke to excess without becoming beastly and a nuisance. I am sure that Oriental countries have suffered much from the introduction of tobacco. N.B.—I am a smoker myself. A great point would be to try to get the liquors free from adulteration. But that I fear is impossible under a capitalistic régime."

His patience even extended to others less worthy of it: to those who came to him with the more or less concealed intention of getting something to their own advantage out of him, or in order to instruct him on matters in which he had taught their teachers. When his activity in the Socialist movement brought round him a mass of more or less disreputable professing adherents, whose application of the principles of Socialism did not go much beyond the idea that Morris should share his money with them, he carried his indulgence to an extreme pitch. He told a friend of his once that a young man and woman, quite unknown, had called on him and asked him to give them a start, as they were going to be married. "Were they Socialists?" his friend asked. "I don't know," Morris answered; "I suppose so. I gave them five pounds to get rid of them, as I was busy."

The life of insults through which he had passed both before and after he became a Socialist had at last left him almost secure of his own temper. His friend, Mr. Newman Howard, has told me that once when they had been doing business together, he took Morris to his own club, which was a Conservative one. An acquaintance of Mr. Howard's, who did not know