"Try not the weed," good Reynolds said;
"I've smoked it 'till I'm nearly dead:
Take not the juice in thy inside;"
But loud the jovial voice replied—
"Tobacco!"
"Oh! stay," the maiden said, "and rest;
I have got on my Sunday best:"
A wink stood in his bright blue eye,
And answered he, without a sigh—
"Tobacco!"
"Beware the briar's poison'd root;
Beware the birds-eye put into 't."
This was the Anti's latest greet.
A voice replied, far up the street—
"Tobacco!"
At break of day, on Clapham Rise.
A pot-boy opened both his eyes,
And to himself did gently swear,
To hear a voice call through the air—
"Tobacco!"
A traveler up a tree he found,
Who smoked and spat upon the ground;
And then among the blossoms ripe
He cried, while puffing at his pipe—
"Tobacco!"
There in the grayish twilight, "What's
That you say?" cried eager Pots,
And from the branch so green and far,
A voice fell like a broken jar—
"Tobacco."
The following lines from the same source have been very appropriately called "The Smoker's Calendar."
When January's cold appears,
A glowing pipe my spirit cheers;
And still it glads the length'ning day,
'Neath February's milder sway.
When March's keener winds succeed,
What charms me like the burning weed?
When April mounts the solar car,
I join him, puffing a cigar;
And May, so beautiful and bright,
Still finds the pleasing weed a-light.
To balmy zephyrs it gives zest,
When June in gayest livery's drest.
Through July Flora's offspring smile,
But still Nicotia's can beguile;
And August, when its fruits are ripe,
Matures my pleasure in a pipe.
September finds me in the garden,
Communing with a long churchwarden.
Ev'n in the wane of dull October,
I smoke my pipe and sip my "robur,"
November's soaking show'rs require
The smoking pipe and blazing fire:
The darkest day in drear December's—
That's lighted by their glowing embers.
The Hon. "Sunset" Cox in his lecture on American Humor alluded to the national characteristics of the French, Spanish, German, and other nationalities, says:—
"The highest enjoyment of a Frenchman is to hear the last cantatrice, the Spaniard enjoys the most skillful thrust of the matador in the bull arena, the Neapolitan the taste of the maccaroni, the German his beer and metaphysics, the darkey his banjo, and the American—