SMOKE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4820, 2 September 1876, Page 3

SMOKE.

(From the Pall Mall Budget.) An Irishman who. had a termagant wife quieted an outbreak of ill-humor by presenting the lady with a short pipe, of which the cost was i,one-,halfpenny ; j- and as he did so he re-, marked, with Quakerlike simplicity, that peace was a goo'd thing 'at any price. There is much peace in tobacco. A legend even relates that it was introduced to Europe by a man whose professional business' was peace-seeking. It was, or was not—-for doctors differ—a certain M. de Nicot, French Ambassador at the Court of Portugal, who brought tobacco under the notice, of Catherine de, Medicis in the year 1560, or thereabouts ; whereas it was probably known in London in 1585. In France tobacco was therefore called nicotians, or “the Queen’s weed';” in England it got itsmore enduring title because, says tradition, Francis Drake carried away the first samples from Tobago. It was the wild man who taught his civilized brother the calm delights of smoke.. The best tobacco in the world for cigars is perhaps that found in Cuba, and the best tobacco in Cuba is grown at Vuelte de , Ahajo. The best snuffs came from Macouba, a village at Martinique, where fhe Empress Josephine was born. The' best .Turkish tobacco is that raised in Macedonia. Tombeki, which is exclusively smoked In nerghilebs, comes from Persia. When good it looks like , new shoe leather used , for soles. Tombeki ’should be washed at least three times before smoking. It is difficult to understand the.source of the pleasure derived from tobacco. If ' ft A cable from the sense' of smell we might,. engage servants to smoke for ns, and preserve the whiteness of our teeth as well as the inoffensiveness of onf hair and clothes. If it depended on taste we should get more joy out of a quid than out of a cigar. It cannot belong to the touch, because chocolate pastilles and some needle-cases feel like cigars in band. The sight seems to have part in our delectation, because tobacco is almost deprived of its perfume by darkness ; yet if its savor depended wholly on light, suggests a sage who has lost all mental coherence in smoky, thoughts, tobacco Would give more pleasure in the sunshine than in the shadow, and no true smoker has over piped assent to such a statement. Van Ftelmont, travelling in desert places, avers that tobacco protected him for long periods against : hunger or fatigue, and he declares that he could make immense ioumeys on foot with no other sustenance. Dr. Stephenson, an - American physician, observed that tobacco may be almost counted on as a specific in certain forms of inflammatory, erysipelas. Ho covers the inflamed surface with wot ’ tobacco leaves, and keep them there till nausea supervenes. A member of the College of 'Medicine. at Stockholm avers that the dried leaves'of’.the . potato, plant would aaswer„the same purpose, and that far better smoking ingredients may be made from them than from the coarser kinds of tobacco in common use.

Much.of- the, tobacco hold at Hamburg and Bremen is mixed with potato leaves. The tobacco that comes from Maryland is the only sort which can be smoked In short pipes with-, out danger to the mucous membrane of the mouth.- It mingles imperceptibly with the potato leaf, and the adulteration can hardly be detected. A learned man declares that we are grievously in error who talk of a meerschaum pipes; we should say, “ICuinmer / ai ~ commemorate perpetually our obligations to the discoverer of a ; .3vhich_ has nothing to do with the sea nor with its foam. Anselm, who has written a profound work on ‘ pipes, instructs mankind that they; should be of the simplest form, so as to he easily cleaned, and that there should never be any wood, metal, caoutchouc, or homconnected with Kumrner pipes may be discreetly cleansed by pouring streams of boiling coffee through them. It is a wise course to bake clay, pipes in a hot oven—after the dinner has been taken out of it. Pipes have had names, like swords —names born of love or glory ; and one is known>to history as “ Anastasia,” one as “Paradise. The first belonged to a . poet, .the other- to Omer Pasha, who had a name to conjure with among the Turks. Tobacco is believed to have destroyed the art of conversation; but perhaps it has only improved it. Smoking does not render talk impossible or even difficult ; but it condenses it and makes it sententious. Tobacco compresses a long-winded discourse, into an epigram. It is at the bottom of the difference between the Welshman’s prayer and that of Mawworm. “ Good ■ night, sir, he . remarked to ids patron saint, “ few words are best ” ; whereas Mawworm has never done with words, and would let his pipe out in more ways than one, while that of the more ancient and acute Briton would keep alight. The smoker wants no other furniture; than some German; tinder. If he begins to burden himself with amber ' mouthpieces, clips and pincers, he ceases to be a man, and becomes a cupboard. Directly the first ash falls off it the flavor is impaired, and the smoke becomes .hot, acrid, and unwholesome. Smoking, .which; has greatly increased in recent years, is, at all events, much better than taking snuff, which disgraced the very waistcoats of our forefathers. “ Had our noses,” mused a philosopher, “ been intended for dustholes they would have been turned the other way.” Possibly, And it is by no means clear to logical intellects that our mouths, were intended for chimneys, or they might with more fitness have been opened at the top of our , heads, and every man might have served as a barometer to his neighbor, who . could have foreseen the state of the weather by noting whether his neighbor was blinded by his own smoke or otherwise. Youth and love depart from us. Tobacco remains, and perhaps it consoles us. It is the only form of happiness which is left to some whom the world has treated unkindly. “Je te laisse ma femme et ma pipe; je terecommende hivu ma pipe,” were the last words of Gavarni’s vagabond. The dying good-for-nothing was not ungrateful. No man has ever laughed in smoking,; we are rather grave, with glad thoughts, over our tobacco, and the moralising, or demoralising,: weed seems silently to convey to us the great truth of life, with which we do well to grow familiar, “ Tu qnoque in pulverem reverteris.” That is, all of ns but the odor of good deeds.