Snuff-taking is an old custom; yet, if we came suddenly upon it in a foreign country, it would make us split our sides with laughter. A grave gentleman takes a little casket out of his pocket, puts a finger and thumb in, brings away a pinch of a sort of powder, and then, with the most serious air possible, as if he were doing one of the most important acts of his life—for, even with the most indifferent snuff-taker, there is a certain look of importance—proceeds to thrust it into his nose; after which he shakes his head, or his waiscoat, or his nose itself, or all three, in the style of a man who has done his duty and satisfied the most serious claims of his well being.
It is curious to see the various ways in which people take snuff. Some do it by little fits and starts, and get over the thing quickly. There are epigrammatic snuff-takers, who come to the point as fast as possible, and to whom the pungency is everything. They generally use a sharp and severe snuff, a sort of essence of pins’ points. Others are all urbanity and polished demeanor; they value the style, as well as the sensation, and offer the box around them as much out of dignity as benevolence.
Some people take snuff irritably, others bashfully, others in a manner as dry as the snuff itself; generally with an economy of the vegetable; others with a luxuriance of gesture, and a lavishness of supply that announces a more moist article, and sheds its superfluous honors upon neckcloth and coat. Dr. Johnson was probably a snuff-taker of this kind. He used to take it out of his waistcoat pocket, instead of a box.
There is a species of long-armed snuff-takers who perform the operation in a style of potent and elaborate preparation, ending with a sudden activity. He puts his head on one side, then stretches forth his arm with pinch in hand, then brings round his arm as a snuff-taking elephant might his trunk, and finally shakes snuff, head and nose together, in a sudden vehemence of convulsion. His eyebrows are all the time lifted up, as if to make more room for the onset, and when he has ended, he draws himself up to the perpendicular, and generally proclaims the victory he has won over the insipidity of the previous moment, by a snuff and a great “Flah!”
Squirrels.
In the second volume of the Museum, we told some things about squirrels in general, but did not say anything about the different kinds particularly, which we will now proceed to do. They are so interesting a class (or, as the naturalists would say, genus) of animals, and especially so to children and young persons, that we think the readers of Merry’s Museum will like to hear more about them.
They have often, I have no doubt, been delighted at seeing their gambols, and their activity in leaping from tree to tree, and especially in seeing them eat nuts, sitting on their hinder legs, or haunches, with their bushy tails turned up over their bodies, and holding the nuts in their fore-paws, and making a hole through the shell with their sharp teeth to extract the kernel. It is very amusing to observe them thus engaged, and very surprising to see how rapidly they will make a hole through the hardest shelled nut. For this purpose, without doubt, it is, that He who made the squirrels, and who is the same glorious Being that created us, has formed their teeth very strong and very sharp.
There is quite a variety of squirrels that inhabit this country, but the most common in New England are the Gray Squirrel, the Red Squirrel, the Ground or Chip Squirrel, and the Flying Squirrel. All these kinds are frequently to be seen in almost every district, though the flying squirrel, on account of his habit of stirring about in the night, and lying still in the day-time, is not so frequently seen. They are all very beautiful and interesting creatures.
The gray squirrel is the largest of those I have named, and is frequently hunted for food, as his flesh is very palatable. A squirrel-hunt, in the fall, is a very common and very exciting amusement in many places in the country, and, when conducted with as much regard to humanity as practicable, is, perhaps, not only a pleasant, but a harmless and proper recreation. It is very apt, however, to be attended with the wanton slaughter of small birds, and other instances of unnecessary cruelty. In the newly-settled parts of the country, these squirrels are sometimes so numerous, that they make very serious havoc with the corn crop, and, in some cases, almost entirely destroy it. Its ordinary food, however, consists of nuts of various kinds, of which, like the other squirrels, it lays up a large supply for the winter. “This species,” says Godman, in his American Natural History, “is remarkable among all our squirrels for its beauty and activity. It is, in captivity, remarkably playful and mischievous, and is more frequently kept as a pet than any other.” I dare say many of my young readers have seen one or more of them in a rolling cage, and, by rapidly running over the bars, making it revolve almost with the speed of a mill-stone. Its general color is gray, as its name indicates, and it has a very large, bushy tail, which sometimes hides almost its whole body.
The red squirrel, or Chickaree, as he is sometimes called in the Middle States, is the next largest of the four, and is a common and beautiful animal, often seen on the trees by the road-sides. Frequently, you will hear a half barking and half twittering noise, and, looking up, you will see a red squirrel on the limb of a tree, a few feet above you, from which the sound proceeds. It seems to be a complaint for your encroachment on his premises, and a kind of warning to move out of his neighborhood. They frequently come around our dwellings for fruit and various sorts of food. Several of them now reside close by my house, and daily come into my woodshed for butternuts, which my children place there for them, and carry them up into a pear-tree standing by the side of the shed, and then devour them. I caught one of them in a box-trap, and kept him in confinement long enough to make a picture of him, and then set him at liberty, and he returns as freely as ever. Their food and habits generally are similar to those of the gray squirrel, though they are much more familiar, in the wild state, than the other. He is of a reddish brown color,—whence he takes his name,—and he has a dark stripe along his side, separating the red color from the white.