“Oh! blow your philosophic nonsense, John,” said Frank, handing Ben the bottle of brandy; “you got it out of a book, and I’m the devil’s apprentice if I didn’t earn the brandy fairly.”
Ben proffered us the bottle, but Ned and I declined. Frank, however, took it, and, with more swagger than swallow, turned it up to his mouth. Ben poured himself out a glassful, and the bottle was set aside for a smoke. Frank drew forth his cigars, Ben his pipe. Strange to say, I dreaded more to appear squeamish before Ben, whom I looked upon as an inferior, than I did either of the others, and with a blush for my weakness took a cigar. Ned declined again, for which Frank called him Parson Conscience, and we proceeded to light. Oh, dire beginning of troubles! I first bit off the end of my cigar, and could not get the end out of my mouth. I sputtered and spit, and twisted my face into more hideous contortions than Medusa ever wore, but I could not eject that little crumbling fragment of tobacco. Now under my tongue, now in the roof of my mouth, and now going down like a pill. I finally had to take it out disgracefully with my fingers. Getting over that, I lit the cigar—a hard black cigar—and commenced to smoke. With the exception of the pain I experienced from crossing my eyes to look at the end of my cigar, I got on very well for several puffs, then I found that I could not expel all the smoke from my mouth, a little would remain and get up my nose or go down into my lungs. I expectorated, too, very constantly, so that my throat became so insufferably dry, I swallowed just once to relieve it, and oh! the bitter, burning taste that went groping down to my stomach! Clear my throat as I would I could not get it up; more and more bitter it became with each succeeding puff. And now a singular sensation came on; a cloud of swan’s down, or carded tow steeped in this same nauseating bitterness, seemed slowly ascending up into my brain, and piling up in sickening oppression just behind my eyeballs, so that I felt a constant desire to close them and roll them inward to see this feathery pain. I felt no interest in the conversation and was absent in all my replies to questions addressed to me, but I tried to look careless and at ease. I even took off my hat and leaned back against a tree, as if in a high state of enjoyment, and tried to flip off the ashes from my cigar with the air of an old smoker. Not understanding this sleight-of-hand practice, my third finger passed so slowly under the burning end that it came out the other side loaded with ashes, and ornamented with a large white blister.
“Smith, how do you like your weed?” said Frank, blowing out a cloud of smoke, holding his cigar daintily between his fore and middle fingers.
“Very much ‘ndeed,” I said faintly; “‘tis very fragrant.”
The tow or down now pressed so hard and bitterly upon my eyeballs that it confused my vision. Frank, Ned and Ben were continually changing places, and their conversation seemed to belong to a different period of my life. Objects were still enough when I gazed steadily at them, but when I winked and then looked, they would seem to be in different places. I tried closing my eyes for relief, but the great downy mass of nausea crowding my brain was almost visible, and I was glad to open them again. Still the bitter, burning taste in my mouth kept going down into my stomach, yet lingering with its sickening flavor on my palate. A cold perspiration stood on my forehead and hands, and I felt that I was looking deadly pale. I made an attempt at a yawn to conceal my faint voice, and said:
“I believe I will take a nap. Wake me if the fish bite.”
I got up and tried to walk to a little hillock a few steps off; but at every step the ground seemed to rise in a steep hill or sink into a fearful declivity before my feet, and I staggered like a drunken man.
“Hello, Smith; has the cigar got you? I thought you had better pluck.”
I was too faint to answer, but fell down, with my head hid by a tree, and with many death-like heavings sank into a drowsy unconsciousness. When I awoke it was late in the afternoon, and all was still around me. Staggering to my feet I heard the distant hum of voices, and taking a deep draught of the cool spring water to slake my feverish thirst, I walked unsteadily down to the creek, where I found my companions fishing with fine success. My vision was not sufficiently restored to admit of my angling, so I sat on the fence and yawningly watched the others till it was time to go home. With well filled baskets Ben, Frank and Ned walked along merrily, while I stalked on miserably, with a throbbing in my temples and an awkward consciousness of being ashamed of everybody, and especially of myself.
At supper I drank a little tea, and, pleading a headache, hurried up to my room. As soon as the servants had been served, mother came up stairs to look after me. She found me with some fever and symptoms of violent cold. A kiss when she came into the room told her I had been smoking, and she smiled as she passed her hand gently over my head, and said: