“It was impossible entirely to shut out the infection. I have known FIFTEEN CHILDREN SLEEP in two beds!”—From the sworn evidence of Mrs. Elizabeth Gain, late matron, and Mr. Adams, late medical attendant, at the Sevenoaks Union—extracted from the Times of Dec. 2, 1841.
ON SNUFF, AND THE DIFFERENT WAYS OF TAKING IT.
Snuff is a sort of freemasonry amongst those who partake of it.
Those who do not partake of it cannot possibly understand those who do. It is just the same as music to the deaf—dancing to the lame—or painting to the blind.
Snuff-takers will assure you that there are as many different types of snuff-takers as there are different types of women in a church or in a theatre, or different species of roses in the flower-bed of an horticulturist.
But the section of snuff-takers has, in common with all social categories, its apostates, its false brethren.
For as sure as you carry about with you a snuff-box, of copper, of tortoise-shell, or of horn (the material matters absolutely nothing), you cannot fail to have met upon your path the man who carries no snuff-box, and yet is continually taking snuff.
The man who carries no snuff-box is an intimate nuisance—a hand-in-hand annoyance—a sort of authorised Jeremy Diddler to all snuff-takers.
He meets you everywhere. The first question he puts is not how “you do?” he assails you instantly with “Have you such a thing as a pinch of snuff about you?”