'Prosperation to this Corporation.'
Brandy is a perfect antidote to inebriation from beer, so we are told. The Corporation should have known this, and been awakened from their long and pleasant dream of prosperation. Brandy I should hardly reckon amongst the drinks that ought to be with cigars, notwithstanding that Tennyson has asked:—
'For what delights can equal those
Which stir, with spirits, inner depths? &c.'
Brandy-and-water, gin, whisky, and the likes are only fit for those who nocturnally lay the foundation for matutinal 'hot coppers,' with the vilest shag in the most odorous of yards of clay. 'Smoking leads to drinking,' has been a favorite old woman's saying for time out of mind. How I hate old women's sayings! A grain—requiring to be picked out with a pin and microscope—of truth, with a bushel of bunkum or cant. How is it, that ever since the days of James I, of 'hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain' memory, there have always been carpers on the injurious effects of smoking? 'Nicotine!' they say, with a would-be-taken-for-know-all-about-it-air. Quite so; but, as recent investigations have proved that, so far as the actual 'poisoning' is concerned, it would take upwards of a thousand years to kill the most inveterate of healthy smokers, we have still time to breathe—and 'it please the pigs.' Mem. for pipers—French tobacco contains the greatest, Turkish the least, per-centage of nicotine. Havana, two and one-half per cent.
"But an unique old woman of Jehu's acquaintance goes further still; boldly asserting that 'smoking is well for making good soldiers, well for making good sailors, well for making sometimes good lawyers; not so well for making good Christians.' Oh! ashes of Hawkins and Raleigh, shudder for the results of 'baccy on degraded human nature.' There must be a rarity of good Christians, then amongst the parsons; they are all fond of it. Dean Aldrich was, perhaps, tho greatest smoker of his day. His excessive attachment to this habit was the cause of many wagers. Here's one:—At breakfast, one morning, at the 'Varsity, an undergraduate laid his companion long odds that the Dean was smoking at that instant. Away they hastened; and, being admitted to the Dean's study, stated the occasion of their visit. The Dean replied, in perfect good humor, to the layer of the bet, 'You see, sir, you have lost your wager; for I am not smoking, but filling my pipe.' But—my cigar has reached its last dying speech, and there is but a drop left in the beaker.
'I'll not leave thee, thou lone drop!
'Twould be mighty unkind,
Since the rest I have swallow'd,
To leave thee behind.'
"Final exhortation. Choose the small, sound, tolerably firm, and elastic cigar: the dwarf contains stuff within which the giant hath not. Don't flatter yourself you're smoking cabbage, if not tobacco—its any odds on rhubarb!
'For me there's nothing new or rare,
Till wine deceives my brain;
And that, I think, 's a reason fair
To fill my pipe again.'"
Charles Lamb, "the gentle Elia" was during a portion of his lifetime a famous smoker. In a letter to Hazlitt he writes, "I am so smoky with last night's ten pipes, that I must leave off." It is said that he smoked only the coarsest and strongest he could procure. Dr. Parr inquired of him how he acquired his "prodigious smoking powers." "I toiled after it, sir," was the reply, "as some men toil after virtue!" Lamb was constant in his use of tobacco, and among all the great luminaries of English literature we know of none more addicted to the use of the pipe. Lamb might often be seen in his chambers in Mitre Court Building, puffing the coarsest weed from a long clay pipe, in company with Parr who used the finest kind of tobacco in a pipe half filled with salt. It was no easy task to relinquish the use of tobacco and it cost him many a struggle and much determined effort. In writing to Wordsworth he says:—"I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my 'Friendly Traitress.' Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse for these five years. I have had it in my head to do it (Farewell to Tobacco) these two years; but tobacco stood in its own light when it gave me headaches that prevented my singing its praises."
Lamb's poem is without doubt one of the finest pieces of verse ever written on tobacco, and seemingly contains both words of praise and dispraise—the latter however in some sense are insincere.