"I have also seen old ladies with trembling limbs and few teeth 'rubbing and chewing,' as if it made them feel young again. I have frequently been ushered unexpectedly into the presence of young ladies, and found them puffing their cigarettes in a manner that convinced me that they knew how to smoke. There is nothing that will more surely and quickly bring a stranger into the fellowship and good graces of the ladies than to join them in their pet habit of snuff-rubbing. It seems to form a bond of friendship which they regard as sacred as the vows of wedlock.
"The older matrons 'rub' less and smoke more, which is in accordance with nature and philosophy: The older we grow the more we smoke. They find solid pleasure in sitting by the open grate after tea with fifteen inches of pipe's tail between their teeth, and slowly but gracefully puffing the perfumes of the exhilarating weed into the room, and watching with childish pleasure the hazy curling wreaths of smoke as they gently float around, changing in form and color until they finally disappear up the chimney, affording rich themes for meditation and profitable study, and perhaps suggestive of earlier days when grandmother, an innocent, blooming maid, was exchanged for the weed, the seed of which produced the plant she is now burning. Everywhere I marked only pleasant and soothing effects from the use of tobacco.
"The planter is never more indifferent to the ills of life and in sympathy with good feeling and pleasure, than when he sits down after dinner in his vine-thatched portico and lights his pipe, passing to his guests pipes, cigars, and tobacco in various forms, leaving them to choose their favorite mode of using it. Sambo is never more contented than when he burns the weed in a cob pipe, and draws the delicious smoke through an elder sprig or mullen stem. But the maid is happiest of all when with her lover she sits face to face, and they 'dip' together from the same magic plant—tobacco.
"In every walk of life throughout the sunny South tobacco in some form may be found, and its effects are always the same, whether drawn from the pocket of the beggar or taken with gloved fingers from the golden tobacco-box of the planter. For snuff the ladies have very nice round boxes with lids which, they always carry with them full of black snuff highly but pleasantly flavored. They also carry little brushes or sticks about three inches long with pliable ends; these they wet in the mouth, then dip into the snuff-box, and then place it in the mouth outside of the gums and rub earnestly for two or three minutes. 'Will you dip with me?' is the usual way of putting the invitation, when the box is drawn from the pocket and rapped slightly on the cover, sometimes by all present, who thus signify their readiness to 'dip,' then it is repassed open to all, and the 'dipping and rubbing' begins in earnest.
Snuff-dipping.
"The only advantage I ever discovered in this unnatural way of snuffing is in avoiding all unpleasant sneezing which snuffing is sure to produce, although it is claimed that it whitens and preserves the teeth and sweetens the mouth, and produces a beneficial effect on the lungs, all of which is true or not, just as you choose to believe. 'Will you dip and rub with me?' said one of the prettiest belles of Winchester, and in another city in another state the daughter of an ex-governor, handing me a silver-tipped brush and opening a rose-wood snuff-box richly inlaid with gold, politely asked me to 'dip' with her, expressing the belief that friendship would always follow. I have frequently been asked by ladies when travelling through the country and stopping at farm-houses, if I used tobacco—as a hint to offer them some, and it was a pleasure to comply, and receive the thankful smile of an appreciative heart."
