“‘I have great faith in the poor,’ Dickens once wrote. ‘To the best of my ability I always endeavour to present them in a favourable light to the rich; and I shall never cease, I hope, until I die, to advocate their being made as happy and as wise as the circumstances of their condition, in its utmost improvement, will admit.’
“Thackeray called Dickens’s ‘Christmas Stories’ a national benefit, and to any man or woman who reads them a personal kindness; and Thackeray, too, served the season with Christmas pieces of sympathy, humor, and pantomime, and with his famous onslaught on pretentious misanthropy. You recall how the Times slated one of his Christmas stories as worthless on the very day that the publishers asked for a second edition; and how Thackeray, in the preface to the second edition,—‘An Essay on Thunder and Small Beer,’—made such delightful fun of the review’s futility, its absurd superciliousness, its inflated language, and its false figures of speech, that snarling criticism learned at least a temporary lesson.
“Thackeray waged his war differently from Dickens, but, on the whole, I have found nothing more compactly adequate on the Christmas spirit than Thackeray’s
I wish you health, and love, and mirth,
As fits the solemn Christmas-tide,
unless it be the conclusion to old Nicholas Breton’s ‘Fantasticks,’ written in 1626: ‘In brief I thus conclude it: I hold it a memory of Heaven’s love and the world’s peace, the mirth of the honest and the meeting of the friendly. Farewell.’”
VIII
The Sovran Herb
“YOU are come most opportunely,” said Professor Maturin, as I was shown into his study. “Just in time for coffee and a cigar and some good talk with my friend the Vicar of All Souls.” And he presented me to a gentleman whose clerical dress graced a more than ordinarily handsome figure. His chair and Professor Maturin’s being on opposite sides of the fireplace, I drew mine between them, and noted, during the pouring of the coffee, the fine seriousness and serenity of the clergyman’s face. He made no remark, however, until he said, “None, I thank you,” slightly raising his hand when I proffered the cigars that Professor Maturin had passed. But, after I had made my selection and had returned the box to Professor Maturin, the Vicar reconsidered and joined us.
“Smoking rests me greatly when I am tired,” he continued, after we had lighted, “but I am thinking of giving it up. I am moved to do so by such statements as this from my afternoon paper”—and extracting a clipping from his pocket and adjusting his eye-glasses, he read: “Medical opinion and statistics unite to prove that smoking irritates the respiratory system, decreases lung capacity, prevents the purification of the blood, depresses the nerve centres, checks heart action, impairs digestion, retards growth, reduces weight, strength, and endurance; restricts the therapeutic effects of medicines, delays the healing of wounds, and impairs, if it does not destroy, mental life—all of which effects, inevitable although perhaps hidden for years, would make tobacco one of the gravest dangers of the century even if it did not harm the eyes, excite thirst, and induce intemperance.”
“If we believed that,” said Professor Maturin, getting out of his chair, “we should not only abandon tobacco instantly, but organize a crusade for its total prohibition. But my medical friends inform me that the statistics are still quite too scanty to generalize from, and that there have been no scientific experiments, except a few which have apparently proved that smoking aids digestion.