In the warm vicinage of glowing stove,
Than pluck the moon’s-man’s nose, beneath the frigid Jove![5]
If there be not a fruitful lesson in the subjoined, which we venture to separate from its context in a recent letter from an esteemed friend and contributor, then we—are mistaken: ‘Apropos of ‘American Ptyalism,’ in your March number: a friend was telling me the other day of the agonies he had suffered from dispensing with the use of tobacco. He had used it in various ways for thirty years, but finding that he was breaking down under it, he broke off abruptly, about a year ago. ‘Let a tobacco-chewer,’ said he, ‘who wishes to know what nerves are, abstain for only one day, and if he has a wife who is delicate and nervous, he will forever after look upon her with a sympathy that he never felt before. Why, Sir, for months after I had forsworn tobacco, my mouth and jaws were any thing but flesh and bone. They were fire, ice, and prussic-acid, alternately. The roof of my mouth would at one moment have the feeling of blistering, and the next of freezing; and in addition to that, needles would occasionally pierce my face in every imaginable way. My head, for the most part, was a large hogshead with a bumble-bee in it, and the bung stopped up. You know that I am not imaginative; but my teeth, Sir, would suddenly grow to the length of a mastodon’s, and perhaps five minutes after, (if at the table,) a narcotic deadness would take the place of the previous excitement, and I would seem to be mumbling my food like people whose teeth are gone. But in the street, I always seemed to be grinning at every body, like some horrible beast who couldn’t get his mouth shut. If you have ever stayed agape for an hour or so, while the doctor was on his way to reset your jaws, you can imagine how distressingly public that feeling is. One bitter cold night I woke on the cellar-stairs, having got that far in search of tobacco, in my night-dress. Did you ever do so? You may think it trifling; but whenever from any cause you have become nervous, the first night that you wake on the cellar-stairs in the dark will be something to remember. At another time I dreamed of dying. I had been long sick and had wasted to a mere nothing; but having had abundant time to prepare for death, I flattered myself that I was quite ready to go; and indeed, my hold upon life was so feeble, (a slight change in the weather would have snapped it, so it seemed,) my very breath was so fluttering and unsatisfactory, that I thought it would be as well perhaps to have done with it. The faces of friends, and the out-door world, with all its many goings-on, were pleasant to behold, but faintly so—indistinctly; my pulsations had gone down to such extreme tenuity, that the effort of getting at a pleasure killed it. But I was mistaken; for just before dying, the thought of my cigars came to me like a blessing; and although my physician told me I had but a few moments to live, I would not be refused. A cigar was brought; I seized it in my bony fingers, held it up to the light, smelt of it, and fondled it till the light was brought; and then, with what little grace my strength would allow, I inhaled that divine tobacco! How complacently, as far as I was able, did I then look around upon my surviving friends! My eyes, however, closed very soon from languor, and my breath now coming only at rather long intervals, the puffs were far between; notwithstanding which, I lived it through to the last inspiration; but in the closing draught, the fire from the cigar burnt my mouth so badly that I—awoke, and found I had actually bitten my lip in a most shocking manner! Well, Sir, you may think it was pleasant not to be dying, and so it was; but as I then felt, I think I would sooner have gone, if I could have taken with me the fragrance of that incomparable regalia.” ••• Our new friend, the writer of the ‘Lines to an Early Robin,’ who desires us to send him six numbers of the Knickerbocker containing his article, inquires ‘which kind of his writing we should prefer, prose or poetry?’ We hardly know what to say, in answer to this categorical query. It will not perhaps be amiss, however, to adopt the in medio tutissimus ibis style of the traveller, who, upon calling for a cup of tea at breakfast, handed it back to the servant, after tasting it, with the remark: ‘If this is tea, bring me coffee—if it is coffee, bring me tea; I want a change.’ If what ‘M.’ sends us is poetry, let him send us prose; if it is prose, (and it certainly ‘has that look,’) let him send us poetry, by all means. ••• Judges and other legal functionaries, though ostensibly ‘sage, grave men,’ are oftentimes sad wags, and fond of fun and frolic. From one of this class we derive the annexed: ‘A few months since, in a neighboring town, a knight of the yard-stick was paying his addresses to a Miss Inches, who, beside some personal attraction, was reputed to be mistress of a snug fortune. At first, the lady encouraged his addresses, but afterward jilted him. Rendered desperate by his double loss, the young man went home and deliberately shot himself; and the coroner’s jury next morning brought in a verdict of ‘Died by Inches!” ••• How very beautiful are these lines upon the death of a young and lovely girl, the bloom of whose fair cheek refused to wither at the blighting touch of the Destroyer:
‘Her eye-lids as in sleep were closed,
Her brow was white like snow;
A smile still lingered on her cheek,
As if ’twas loth to go!
‘And it may be a smile so sweet,
So quiet and serene,
Was never on the healthy brow