Snuff-Taking.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 hiswaistcoat 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!”
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 hiswaistcoat 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!”