"I will accommodate you and leave it." Benjamin was happy to add to
Sir Hans' collection, in the circumstances.
Benjamin felt the need of more physical exercise, so that when he
entered the printing house, he "took to working at press." He drank
water only; all other employees, about fifty of them, drank strong
beer. He was really a curiosity to them.
"Beer-guzzling is a detestable habit," he said to a fellow-workman,
"and it is a very expensive one, too, for a poor fellow like you."
"I could not do a decent day's work without beer. I drink it for
strength."
"So much the worse for you; beer strength is the worst sort of
weakness," continued Benjamin. "Just stop a moment and think what a
beer-barrel you make of yourself; a pint before breakfast, a pint at
breakfast, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a
pint in the afternoon, a pint at six o'clock, and a pint when you have
done work--almost a gallon each day! Why, I could not hold half as
much as that; I should run over."
"Then you don't believe a man can do more work for drinking strong
beer?"
"Of course I don't. I can do more work than any man in the
establishment, and I can lift more than any other man here; and I
drink nothing but water. If beer imparts the strength you imagine, any
one of you ought to do more work and lift more than I can; isn't that
so?"
The workmen had good reason to believe this; for Benjamin had kept his
eyes and ears open from the time he entered the printing house, and he
had learned just what the men thought about beer, why they drank it,
how much work they did, and how much they could lift.
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