ALL ABOUT TOBACCO.
“HOW MUCH?”—AMOUNT IN THE WORLD.—“SIAMESE TWINS.”—A MIGHTY ARMY.—ITS NAME AND NATIVITY.—A DONKEY RIDE.—LITTLE BREECHES.—WHIPPING SCHOOL GIRLS AND BOYS TO MAKE THEM SMOKE.—TOM’S LETTER.—“PURE SOCIETY.”—HOW A YOUNG MAN WAS “TOOK IN.”—DELICIOUS MORSELS.—THE STREET NUISANCE.—A SQUIRTER.—ANOTHER.—IT BEGETS LAZINESS.—NATIONAL RUIN.—BLACK EYES.—DISEASE AND INSANITY.—USES OF THE WEED.—GETS RID OF SUPERFLUOUS POPULATION.—TOBACCO WORSE THAN RUM.—THE OLD FARMER’S DOG AND THE WOODCHUCK.—“WHAT KILLED HIM.”
“HOW MUCH?”—AMOUNT IN THE WORLD.—“SIAMESE TWINS.”—A MIGHTY ARMY.—ITS NAME AND NATIVITY.—A DONKEY RIDE.—LITTLE BREECHES.—WHIPPING SCHOOL GIRLS AND BOYS TO MAKE THEM SMOKE.—TOM’S LETTER.—“PURE SOCIETY.”—HOW A YOUNG MAN WAS “TOOK IN.”—DELICIOUS MORSELS.—THE STREET NUISANCE.—A SQUIRTER.—ANOTHER.—IT BEGETS LAZINESS.—NATIONAL RUIN.—BLACK EYES.—DISEASE AND INSANITY.—USES OF THE WEED.—GETS RID OF SUPERFLUOUS POPULATION.—TOBACCO WORSE THAN RUM.—THE OLD FARMER’S DOG AND THE WOODCHUCK.—“WHAT KILLED HIM.”
How much?
Do you know how much money is being squandered to-day, in the United States, in the filthy, health-destroying use of tobacco?
No.
Only $410,958! That’s all.
In Commissioner Wells’s report, it is shown that in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1868, the amount received from the tax on chewing and smoking tobacco was, in round numbers, fifteen million dollars. Add to this the cost of production, and dealers’ profits, which are five times more than the revenue tax, amounting to seventy-five million dollars. The number of cigars taxed was six hundred millions. It is calculated as many more are used through smuggling, makinga grand total yearly expenditure in the United States of one hundred and fifty millions of dollars for tobacco alone!
THE IDOL OF TOBACCO USERS.
Give me $410,958 a day, and I will go into the pauper houses of these United States, and bring forth every pauper child; I will go down into the dark, damp cellars, and away into the cobweb-hung attics, and bring forth every ragged child of crime and poverty. I will take all these little bread-and-gospel-starved children, feed, clothe, and send them to school and Sabbath school, the year round, with $410,958 a day.
Christian ministers and professors, think of it! Young men and boys, think of it!
Yes, the Americans smoke, snuff, and chew one hundred and fifty million dollars in tobacco annually. The Chinamen consume $38,294,200 worth of opium in a year. The Russians stuff and glut over an unmerciful amount of lard and candles in a year; and the Frenchmen disgust the rest of mankind by eating all the frogs they can catch. Then there are the cannibals of the South Seas—they love tender babies to eat, but not an old tobacco-soaked sailor will they masticate.
Tobacco kills lice, bugs, fops, small boys, and other vermin.
Tobacco fees doctors, and fills hospitals.
Tobacco fills insane asylums and jails.
Tobacco fills pauper houses and graveyards.
Tobacco makes drunkards.
Tobacco and rum go hand and hand; they are one, inseparable; they are twins, yea, Siamese twins, the Chang and Eng of all villanies. I never saw a drunkard who did not first use tobacco. Did you?
John H. Hawkins, the father of Washingtonians, said he never was able to find a drunkard who had not first used tobacco.
Too low a Figure.
Since writing the above I have been variously informed that my figures are too low. The national revenue derived from tobacco in the States for the year ending June, 1871, was $31,350,707.
Cigars.
“According to General Pleasonton, who collected the tax on them, there were 1,332,246,000 cigars used in the United States last year. This one billion three hundred and thirty-two million two hundred and forty-six thousand cigars were undoubtedly retailed at ten cents apiece. So we smoked up in this country, last year, $133,224,600 worth of tobacco.”
This does not include pipe-smoking nor chewing tobacco.
The total amount of the vile weed produced in the world annually is as follows:—
The mighty Army of Invasion.
It is estimated that there are two hundred millions of tobacco-users in the world. What a splendid regiment of sneezers, spewers, smokers, and spitters they would make! They would form a phalanx of five deep, reaching entirely around the world.
Wouldn’t they look gay? Forty millions, with filthy old tobacco pipes stuck in their mouths, “smoking away ‘like devils!’” Eighty millions, with best Havana cigars, made in Connecticut and New York, from cabbage leaf, waste stumps of cigars, and “old soldiers,” thrown away by Irish, Dutch, Italians, French, and Chinese, out of cancerous mouths, whiskey mouths, syphilitic and ulcerous mouths, rotten-toothed mouths—splendid!—protruding from between their sweet lips! Forty millions with pigtail and fine cut, sweet “honey dew,” made as above, scented, grinding away in their forty million human mills! Forty millions, including five millions in petticoats, holding cartridge boxes (of snuff) in their delicate hands, from which they distribute death-dealing ammunition to—their lovely noses!
See them “marching along, marching along,” to the tune that never an “old cow died on” yet, or hogs, or any animal, except he unfortunately became mixed up involuntarily with viler humans,—with jolly banners, blacked in the smokeand stench of great battles, bearing the words “Death to Purity!” “War to the Hilt with Health!” “All hail, Disease, Drunkenness, and Death!”
Splendid picture!
Alas! true picture!
And what do they leave in their wake?
Death to all animal and vegetable life!
The vile spittle and debris dropped by the way have killed all vegetable life. There’s nothing vile and filthy that they have not cursed the ground with.
The following are a few of the articles mixed with various brands of tobacco, as though the original poisonous weed was not sufficiently deleterious: Opium, copperas, iron, licorice,—blacked with lampblack,—the dirtiest refuse molasses, the offal of urine, etc.
The effluvia and smoke arising have killed the foliage and the birds by the wayside, and miles of beautiful forests have been burned away. Nothing but a broad strip of blackened, cursed, and barren waste, remains. To offset this evil there is—nothing.
Now, this army is daily on its march through our land, and I have onlybegunto mention its depredations. Who will stop it?
Its Names and Nativity.
Tobacco is a native of the West Indies. Romanus Paine, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, seems to have been the first to introduce tobacco into Europe as an article of luxury. Paine is said to have lived a vagabond life, and died a miserable death.
The natives called itPeterna. The name tobacco is derived from the town of Tabaco, New Spain. The Latin name, Nicotiana Tabacum, is from Jean Nicot, who was a French ambassador from the court of Francis I. (born the year tobacco was introduced by Paine) to Portugal. Onthe return of Nicot, he brought and introduced to the French court the narcotic plant, and popularized it in France. Thence it was introduced all over Europe, but encountered great opposition. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into England about 1582.
History informs us that a Persian king so strongly prohibited its use, and visited such severe penalties upon its votaries, that many of his subjects fled away to the caves, forests, and mountains, where they might worship this matchless deity free from persecution. The czar prohibited its use in Russia under penalty of death to smokers, mitigating snuff takers’ penalty tomerely slitting open their noses.
PUNISHMENT OF THE TURK.
In Constantinople a Turk found smoking was placed upon a donkey, facing the beast’s rump, and with a pipe-stem run through his nose, was rode about the public streets, a sad warning to all tobacco smokers. King James thundered against it. The government of Switzerland sounded its voice against it till the Alps echoed again.
But in spite of opposition and the vileness of the article, it has worked itself into a general use,—next to that oftable salt,—and to-day a majority of the adult male population of our Christianized and enlightened United States are its acknowledged votaries.
SMOKERS OF FOUR GENERATIONS.
In the year 1850 I saw in a house in Sedgwick, Me., individuals of four different generations smoking. The old grandmother was eighty-five years old. She smoked. A grandmother, sixty-three, with her husband, smoked. Their son smoked, and had very weak eyes. His two nephews smoked and chewed tobacco. The elder lady died with scrofulous sore eyes, not having, for years before her death, a single eyelash, and her swollen, inflamed eyelids were a sight disgusting to view. All her grand and great grandchildren whom I saw were scrofulous. Some suffered with rheumatism, and all were yellowish or tawny.
Little Children learn to smoke.
I once saw a father teaching his little three-year-old boy to smoke. I knew a boy at Ellsworth who learned to smoke before he could light his pipe. His father, who taught him the wicked habit, was not at all respectable, and had often been jailed for selling rum.
The following is a sample of the modern John Hay’s style of teaching:—
LITTLE-BREECHES.“I come into town with some turnips,And my little Gabe come along—No four-year-old in the countyCould beat him for pretty and strong;Peart, and chipper, and sassy,Always ready to swear and fight,And I’d larnt him to chaw terbacker,Jest to keep his milk teeth white.“The snow come down like a blanketAs I passed by Taggart’s store;I went in for a jug of molasses,And left the team at the door.They scared at something and started—I heard one little squall,And hell-to-split over the prairieWent team, Little-Breeches and all.“Hell-to-split over the prairie!I was almost froze with skeer;But we rousted up some torches,And sarched for ’em far and near.At last we struck hosses and wagon,Snowed under a soft white mound:Upsot, dead beat—but of little GabeNo hide nor hair was found.“And here all hopes soured on meOf my fellow-critters’ aid—I jest flopped down on my marrow bones,Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed.By this the torches was played out,And me and Isrul ParrWent off for some wood to a sheep-fold,That he said was somewhar thar.“We found it at last, and a little shedWhere they shut up the lambs at night;We looked in, and seen them huddled thar,So warm, and sleepy, and white.“And thar sot Little-Breeches, and chirpedAs peart as ever you see:‘I want a chaw of terbacker,And that’s what’s the matter of me.’”
“I WANT A CHAW OF TERBACKER.”
Whipping School Boys and Girls to make them smoke.
In London, in 1721, Thomas Hearne tells us school children were compelled to smoke. “And I remember,” he says, “that I heard Tom Rogers say that when he was yeoman beadle that year, when the plague raged, being a boyat Eaton, all the boys of his school were obliged to smoke in the school-room every morning, and that he never was whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoking.”
YOUNG SMOKERS.
Some boys, nowadays, would gladly undergo the “flogging” if they could be permitted to enjoy a smoke afterwards.
There are but few people inhabiting the eastern coast, and following fishing for a vocation, who do not smoke or chew tobacco; and their wives and children also smoke.
Sailors are proverbially addicted to smoking and chewing. Their love of tobacco far exceeds their appetite for grog.
The following letter from a sailor below port to his brother in London explains itself:—
Near Gravesend, on board Belotropen.To dear Brother Bob.Dear Bob: This comes hopin’ to find you well, as it leaves me safe anchored here yester arternoon. Voyge short an’ few squalls. Hopes to find old father stout, and am out of pigtail.Sight o’ pigtail at Gravesend but unfortinately unfit for a dog to chor. I send this by Capt’n’s boy, and buy me pound best pigtail and let it be good—best at 7 diles (Dials), sign of black boy, and am short of shirts—only took two, whereof one is wored out and tother most.Capt’n’s boy loves pigtail, so tie it up when bort an’ put in his pocket. Aint so partick’ler about the shirts as present can be washed, but be sure to go to 7 diles sign of Blackboy and git the pigtail as I haint had a cud to chor since thursday. Pound’ll do as I spect to be up tomorrow or day arter. an’ remember the pigtail—so I am your lovin’ brotherTom ——.P. S. dont forget the pigtail.
Near Gravesend, on board Belotropen.
To dear Brother Bob.
Dear Bob: This comes hopin’ to find you well, as it leaves me safe anchored here yester arternoon. Voyge short an’ few squalls. Hopes to find old father stout, and am out of pigtail.
Sight o’ pigtail at Gravesend but unfortinately unfit for a dog to chor. I send this by Capt’n’s boy, and buy me pound best pigtail and let it be good—best at 7 diles (Dials), sign of black boy, and am short of shirts—only took two, whereof one is wored out and tother most.
Capt’n’s boy loves pigtail, so tie it up when bort an’ put in his pocket. Aint so partick’ler about the shirts as present can be washed, but be sure to go to 7 diles sign of Blackboy and git the pigtail as I haint had a cud to chor since thursday. Pound’ll do as I spect to be up tomorrow or day arter. an’ remember the pigtail—so I am your lovin’ brother
Tom ——.
P. S. dont forget the pigtail.
Pure Society.—How a young Man was “took in.”
When a young man is about to be “taken into society,” the question naturally arises, Is the young man, or the society, to be benefited by the accession? As the young man seems anxious to make hisdebutthere, we presumeheis to be benefited by the initiation into pure society.
EXAMINATION OF THE SMOKER.
Since nine tenths of the young men are tobacco-users, we will presume safely enough that this young man is one ofthem. He has used it from five to seven years,—sufficient time to admit of its becoming part and parcel of him.
The young man—“John” is his name—is before the examining committee, who, not being blind or obtuse from the use of the weed themselves, and knowing no young man is fit to enter pure society who uses, or has used, tobacco, without being purified, they submit him to the test, with the following results:—
“His clothes are impregnated with tobacco,” the examiner reports.
“Let them be removed and purified,” is the command.
PURIFYING HIS BLOOD.
They are soaked in alkalies, and soap, and water. They are washed, and boiled, dried, aired, and pressed and pronounced clean, and fit for society.
The committee next examine John’s skin. “It is full of nicotine. It must be cleansed.” So John is taken to the Turkish bath, the most likely place to remove the filth permeating his every pore. Dr. Dio Diogenes puts him through; he is “sweated,” and the great room is scented throughoutby the tobacco aroma arising from the ten thousand before clogged-up pores of his skin. He is all but parboiled, then soaped and scrubbed, rubbed, and then goes into the plunge bath. The fishes are instantly killed. The canary bird in the next room is suffocated by the effluvia penetrating to his cage. The young man is wiped again, dried, and cooled.
Again the committee smell. John is not yet pure. The nicotine is “in his blood,” says Dr. Chemistry. A faucet is introduced into John’s aorta, and his blood drawn off into a bucket for the chemist to analyze and purify of tobacco. Still the flesh is full of nicotine, and it must be removed and purified. It is too late for John to object, and the fact cannot be denied that the poisonisin his muscle; so he is stripped of the integuments to his framework.
CLEANSING HIS BONES.
The committee now examine the bony structure.
In Germany they have recently dug up the bones of tobacco-users who have been dead years, and found nicotine (tobacco principle) in them. May not this man’s bones befull of nicotine, which will come out through, if we replace the integuments, blood, and garments?
“The bones must be subjected to purification,” said the judge.
They are soaked in alkalies, boiled in acids, and sufficient nicotine is extracted to kill five men not hardened in the tobacco service.
Thus, and only thus, could John have been purified from his vile habit and its results, and fitted for decent male society, female society, and Christian society. There is said to be one other place where John can possibly have the nicotine of seven years’ deposit taken out of him. It is a very warm place, and the principal chemical ingredient used is said to be sulphuric, and kept up to a boiling point by means of infernal great fires.
Delicious Morsels.
Nicotine is the active principle of tobacco, expressed chemically thus: C10H8N. One fourth of a drop will kill a rabbit, one drop will kill a large dog. It is a virulent poison, the intoxicating principle ofpreparedtobacco. It is not in the natural leaf.It results from fermentation.Two little boys were overheard discussing tobacco merits and demerits. One was in favor of tobacco, the other “anti.” “Why,” said anti, “it’s so poisonous that a drop of the oil, put on a dog’s tail, will kill a man in a minute.” It is the opium in the best Havanas which enslaves the smokers more than the tobacco. Those cigars, also American manufactured cigars, are dipped in a solution of opium. It is said that twenty thousand dollars’ worth of opium is used annually in one cigar manufactory in Havana.
The Street Nuisance.
“I knew, by the smoke that so lazily curledFrom his lips, ’twas a loafer I happened to meet;And I said, “If a nuisance there be in the world,’Tis the smoke of cigars on a frequented street.”“It was night, and the ladies were gliding around,And in many an eye shone the glittering tear;But the loafer puffed on, and I heard not a sound,Save the sharp, barking cough of each smoke-stricken dear.”
THE SMOKER.
Here is a “blow” from Horace Greeley. “I do not say that every chewer or smoker is a blackguard; but show me a blackguard who is not a lover of tobacco, and I will show you two white blackbirds.” Good enough for Horace.
Now, admitting that there are gentlemen who smoke and chew on the streets, how are ladies, or the people, to know that they are such, since the loafer, the blackguard, the thief, the pickpocket, the profaners of God’s name (all), the blackleg, the murderers bear the same insignia of their profession? At one time, every man incarcerated in the Connecticut state prison was a tobacco-user; nearly all, also, at the Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts prisons.
It is quite lamentable to see how liable tobacco-using is to convert a thorough gentleman into a selfish, dirty blackguard, who will promenade the streets, chatting with some boon companion, while the pair go recklessly along, blowing their offensive smoke directly into ladies’ faces, their ashes into their beautiful eyes, and spitting their filthy saliva directly or indirectly over costly dresses, thinking only of self!
The Man who chews.
Behold the picture of the man who chews!A human squirt-gun on the world let loose.A foe to neatness, see him in the streets,His surcharged mouth endangering all he meets.The dark saliva, drizzling from his chin,Betrays the nature of the flood within.Where, then, O where, shall Neatness hope to hideFrom this o’erwhelming of the blackened tide?Shall she seek shelter in the house of prayer?A hundred squirting mouths await her there.The same foul scene she’s witnessed oft before,—Asolemn cudis laid at every door!The vile spittoon finds place in many a pew,As if one part of worship were tochew!
THE CHEWER.
Another Street Nuisance.
Speaking of President Grant and his cigar, a writer says,—
“Not only do smoky editors take advantage of this weakness of our president, but tobacconists, greedy of gain, are subjecting it to their sordid purposes. Hitherto these gentlemen have insulted the public taste by posting at their shop doors some savage, some filthy squaw, or some unearthly image, to invite attention to their cigars and ‘negro head tobacco.’ And all this seemed appropriate. But cupidity is audacious, and they now insult American pride by installing at their doors a full,life-like, wooden bust of General Grant offering to passing travellers a cigar. Emblems of majesty are not rare. We have Jupiter with his thunderbolt, Hercules with his club, Ahasuerus with his sceptre, Washington with his Declaration of Independence, Lincoln with his Proclamation of Liberty to four millions, and now, in this year of our Lord, we have President Grant and his cigar!
SIGN OF THE TIMES.
It begets Laziness and national Ruin.
Sir Benjamin Brodie, a distinguished physician of London, says, “A large proportion of habitual smokers are rendered lazy and listless, indisposed to bodily and incapable of much mental exertion. Others suffer from depression of the spirits, amounting to hypochondriasis, which smoking relieves for the time, though it aggravates the evil afterwards....
“What will be the result, if this habit be continued by future generations?”
Tobacco is ruining our nation. Its tendency is to make the individual user idle, listless, and imbecile. Individuals make up the nation. Those nations using the most tobacco are the most rapidly deteriorating.
Once the ships of Holland ploughed the waters with a broom at the mast-head, emblematic of her power to sweep the ocean. Behold her now! “Her people self-satisfied, content with their pipes, and the glories once achieved by their grandfathers.” Look at the Mexicans, and the lazzaroni of Italy. “Spain took the lead of civilized nations in the use of tobacco; but since its introduction into that country, the noble Castilian has become degenerated, his moral, intellectual, and physical energies weakened, paralyzed, and debased. The Turks, descendants of the warlike Saracens, are notoriously known as inveterate smokers. And to-day they are characterized as an enervated, lazy, worthless, degenerate people.”
Go about the shops, and bar-rooms, and billiard-halls ofour own community, and seeourlazzaroni. What class do they principally represent—the active and virtuous, or the idle and vicious?
MY LAZY SMOKING FRIEND.
A young man greatly addicted to smoking, and who, to my knowledge, was exceedingly lazy, was seated by the writer’s fireside, listless and idle, save barely drawing slowly in and out the tobacco smoke of an old pipe, when, after repeated requests of his sister that he should go out to the shed and bring in some wood to replenish the dying embers, she got out of patience with him, and exclaimed,—
“There, Ed, you’re the laziest fellow I ever saw, sitting there and smoking till the fire has nearly gone out, on a cold day like this.”
“Ugh!” he grunted, and slowly added, “I once heard tell of a lazier boy than I am, sister.”
“How could that be possible? Do tell me,” she exclaimed, impatiently.
“Well, you see,”—spitting on the floor,—“when he came to die, he couldn’t do it. He was too lazy to draw his last breath, and they had to get a corkscrew to draw it for him.”
“SHALL I ASSIST YOU TO ALIGHT?”
WORK FOR TONGUES AND FINGERS.
“You think it smart and cunning, John,To use the nauseous weed;To make your mouth so filthy then,It were a shame indeed.To smoke and chew tobacco, John,Till your teeth are coated brown,Making a chimney of your nose,And of yourself a clown,—“Yes, that would be so cunning, John,—The girls will love you so;Your breath will smell so sweet,They’ll want you for a beau.Because you use tobacco, John,You think yourself a man;But the girls will find it out, John,Disguise it all you can.”
“Shall I assist you to alight?” asked one of those nice young men who loaf about country hotel doors, smoking a villanous cigar, of a buxom country lass, on arrival of the stage.
“Thank you, sir,” said the girl, with irony, and a jump, “but I never smoke.”
Black Eyes and Fingers.
An American traveller visiting the greatest cigar manufactory in Seville, Spain, says, amongst other things,—
“Here were five thousand young girls, all in one room,—and Sevillians, too,—in the factory. They are all old enough to be mischievous, and ‘put on airs.’ I doubt if as many black eyes can be seen in any one place as in this factory. Their fingers move rapidly, and their tongues a little faster. The manufactories consume ten thousand pounds of tobacco per day.
“I have often heard that a woman’s weapon is her tongue, and that the sex were notorious for using it; but, like many other unkind statements against Heaven’s best, last gift to man, I doubted it until I peeped into the Fabrico deTabacos of Seville. What must be the weight of mischief manufactured each day along with the cigars, I don’t know, but I feel safe in stating that it is at least equal with the tobacco. This factory was erected in 1750, is six hundred and sixty feet long by five hundred and twenty-five wide, and is surrounded by a mole. It is the principal factory in the kingdom, as every one uses tobacco in some shape in Andalusia, not excepting the ladies; but it is when they are on the shady side of forty that they puff and cogitate. Snuff, cigars, and cigarettes are all manufactured here. The best workers among the girls earn about forty cents per day, the poorest about half that amount. Every night they are all searched.”
Disease and Insanity.
Tobacco helps to fill our insane asylums. Dr. Butler, of Hartford, and others, have assured me of the fact. “I am personally acquainted with several individuals, now at lunatic asylums, whose minds first became impaired by the use of tobacco.”
“In France, the increase in cases of lunacy and paralysis keeps pace, almost in exact ratio, with the increase of the revenue from tobacco. From 1812 to 1832, the tobacco tax yielded 28,000,000f., and there were 8000 lunatic patients. Now the tobacco revenue is 180,000,000f., and there are 44,000 paralytic and lunatic patients in French asylums. Napoleon and Eugenie, assisted by their subjects, smoked out five million pounds of tobacco the year before they went on their travels. Take notice. As ye sow, so also reap.”
Sir Benjamin Brodie, before quoted, says, “Occasionally tobacco produces a general nervous excitability, which in a degree partakes of the nature ofdelirium tremens.”
The Meerschaum. A Sonnet.
“The gorgeous glories of autumnal dyes;The golden glow that haloes rare old wine;The dying hectic of the day’s decline;The rainbow radiance of auroral skies;The blush of Beauty, smit with Love’s surprise;The unimagined hues in gems that shine,—All these, O Nicotina,maybe thine!But what of thy bewildered votaries?How fares it with the more precious human clay?Keeps thelippure, while wood and ivory stains?Stays thesightclear, while smoke obscures the day?Works thebraintrue, while poison fills the veins?Shines thesoulfair where Tophet-blackness reigns?Let shattered nerves declare! Let palsied manhood say!”J. Ives Pease.
Uses and Abuses of Tobacco.
In our opening remarks on tobacco, we stated some of the uses of tobacco, such as killing bugs and lice on plants, vermin on cattle, etc. It prevents cannibals from eating up our poor sailors; and, in the Mexican war, it was ascertained that the turkey buzzards would not eat our dead soldiers who were impregnated with tobacco!
Dean Swift published a pamphlet, in his day, showing how the superfluity of poor children could be made an article of diet for landlords who had already consumed the parents’ substance. All may not admit that thereisa superfluity of children and youth in the larger towns and cities of our country. A New York paper says that “five thousand young men might leave New York city without being missed.” Now for our argument. “Like begets like.” The lamb feeds upon pure hay or sweet grass. It is the emblem of purity; it represented Christ. The lion and tiger haveonlytearing teeth, and subsist upon animal food, and they are of a wild, ferocious nature. Man stuffs himself with tobacco poison. It becomes a part of him,—muscle, blood, bone! Like begets like, and behold the tobacco-user’s children,puny, yellow, pale, scrofulous, rickety, and consumptive. Many years ago it was estimated that twenty thousand persons died annually in the United States from the use of tobacco. Nine tenths begin with tobacco catarrh, go on to consumption, and death.
“The diseased, enfeebled, impaired, and rotten constitution of the parent is transmitted to the child, which comes into the world an invalid, and then, being exposed more directly to the poisonous effects of this pernicious habit of the parent, its struggle for life is exceedingly short, and in less than twelve months from its birth it sickens, droops, and dies, and the milkman’s adulterated milk, especially in cities, is often made the scape-goat for this uncleanly, if not sinful habit of the parent.”
If it is true that the wicked mostly make up the tobacco-consumers, you perceive by this, that like the prisons and gallows, tobacco catches and kills off the superfluous wicked population and their offspring. The sins of the parents are visited upon their children, and what a host of puny, wretched, and wicked little children tobacco helps to rid the world of. Selah!
Tobacco worse than Rum.
Tobacco is worse than rum because, by its begetting a dryness of the throat and fauces, it creates an appetite for strong drink. It is too evident to need corroboration. 1. “Rum intoxicates.” So does tobacco. “Intoxication” is from the Greeken(in) andtoxicon(poison). Therefore, when any perceptible poison is in the person, he is intoxicated. 2. “Alcohol blunts the senses, and ruins many a fair intellect.” So does tobacco. But since the ruined drunkard used tobacco, how do you know it was not tobacco which ruined him? Come, tell me! 3. “Rum makes a man miserable.” So does tobacco. The user is in Tophet the day he is out of the weed. 4. “Whiskey makespaupers.” So does tobacco. I knew a whole family who went to the Brooklyn, Me., pauper house one winter, when, if the father and mother had not used tobacco, they could have been in health and prosperity. 5. “Rum makes thieves.” So does tobacco. Men have been known to steal tobacco when they would not have stolen bread. 6. “It makes murderers.” Where is the murderer of the nineteenth century who was not a tobacco-user, and an excessive user at that, from George Dennison, who on the drop asked the sheriff for a chew of tobacco, to Stokes, in his New York cell, surrounded by a cloud of tobacco smoke, awaiting the decision of the jury to ascertain if it was really he who shot the “Prince of Erie”?
WHAT KILLED THE DOG?
You can’t always tell just what kills a man, or a dog, as the following story proves:—
“An old farmer was out one fine day looking over his broad acres, with an axe on his shoulder, and a small dog athis heels. They espied a woodchuck. The dog gave chase, and drove him into a stone wall, where action immediately commenced. The dog would draw the woodchuck partly out from the wall, and the woodchuck would take the dog back. The old farmer’s sympathy getting high on the side of the dog, he thought he must help him. So, putting himself in position, with the axe above the dog, he waited the extraction of the woodchuck, when he would cut him down. Soon an opportunity offered, and the old man struck; but the woodchuck gathered up at the same time, took the dog in far enough to receive the blow, and the dog’s head was chopped off on the spot. Forty years after, the old man, in relating the story, would always add, with a chuckle of satisfaction, ‘And that dog don’t know, to this day, but what the woodchuck killed him!’”
We regret our want of space to ventilate tobacco more thoroughly.
DRESS AND ADDRESS OF PHYSICIANS.
GOSSIP IS INTERESTING.—COMPARATIVE SIGNS OF GREATNESS.—THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD.—ADDRESS NECESSARY.—“THIS IS A BONE.”—DRESSnotNECESSARY.—COUNTRY DOCTORS’ DRESS.—HOW THE DEACON SWEARS.—A GOOD MANY SHIRTS.—ONLY WASHED WHEN FOUND DRUNK.—LITTLE TOMMY MISTAKEN FOR A GREEN CABBAGE BY THE COW.—AN INSULTED LADY.—DOCTORS’ WIGS.—“AIN’T SHE LOVELY?”—HARVEY AND HIS HABITS.—THE DOCTOR AND THE VALET.—A BIG WIG.—BEN FRANKLIN.—JENNER’S DRESS.—AN ANIMATED WIG; A LAUGHABLE STORY.—A CHARACTER.—“DASH, DASH.”
GOSSIP IS INTERESTING.—COMPARATIVE SIGNS OF GREATNESS.—THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD.—ADDRESS NECESSARY.—“THIS IS A BONE.”—DRESSnotNECESSARY.—COUNTRY DOCTORS’ DRESS.—HOW THE DEACON SWEARS.—A GOOD MANY SHIRTS.—ONLY WASHED WHEN FOUND DRUNK.—LITTLE TOMMY MISTAKEN FOR A GREEN CABBAGE BY THE COW.—AN INSULTED LADY.—DOCTORS’ WIGS.—“AIN’T SHE LOVELY?”—HARVEY AND HIS HABITS.—THE DOCTOR AND THE VALET.—A BIG WIG.—BEN FRANKLIN.—JENNER’S DRESS.—AN ANIMATED WIG; A LAUGHABLE STORY.—A CHARACTER.—“DASH, DASH.”
“All personal gossip is interesting, and all of us like to know something of the men whom we hear talked of day by day, and whose works have delighted or instructed us; how they dressed, talked, or walked, and amused themselves; what they loved to eat and drink, and how they looked when their bows were unbent.”
Most famous men have had some peculiarity of dress or address, or both. Our first impression of Goliah—by what we heard of his size—was that he was as high as a church steeple; and of Napoleon, that he was as short as TomThumb. But when we read for ourselves, we found that Goliah was much less in stature than Xerxes and some modern giants, and Napoleon was of medium size.
No man can become truly great in any capacity unless he has the innate qualities of greatness within his composition. These qualities, if possessed, will appear in his face,—for face, as well as acts, indicate the character.
There seem to be elements of character in all great men—almost the identical basis of character in the one as in the other, the different vocations explaining any minor differences that are to be found in them. Thus we find precisely the same features in the character of Michael Angelo and the Duke of Wellington—two men living three centuries apart, in different countries—one a great artist, and the other a great warrior. Compare Washington and Julius Cæsar; you will find them surprisingly alike in many particulars. In them, as in every instance I have yet studied, the distinguishing feature is an intense love of work—work of the kind that fell to the lot of each to do. Another feature is indomitable courage; and the last is a never-dying perseverance. Though I have carefully studied the histories of many of the greatest men, in order, if I could, to discover the source of their greatness, I have never yet come upon one great life that has lacked these three features—love of work, unfailing courage, and perseverance.
“To be a good surgeon one should be a complete man. He should have a strong intellect to give him judgment and enable him to understand the case to be operated on in all its bearings. He needs strong perceptive faculties especially, through which to render him practical, to enable him not only to know and remember all parts, but to use instruments and tools successfully; also large constructiveness, to give him a mechanical cast of mind. More than this, he must have inventive power to discover and apply the necessary mechanical means for the performance of the duties of his profession.He must have large Firmness, Destructiveness, and Benevolence, to give stability, fortitude, and kindness. He must have enough of Cautiousness to make him careful where he cuts, but not so much as to make him timid, irresolute, and hesitating; Self-esteem, to give assurance; Hope, to inspire in his patients confidence, and genial good-nature, to make him liked at the bedside.
THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD.
“In the group of eminent men whose likenesses are herewith presented, we find strongly marked physiognomies in each. There is nothing weak or wanting about them. All seem full and complete. Take their features separately—eyes, nose, mouth, chin, cheeks, lips—analyze closely asyou can, and you will discover strength in every lineament and in every line. In Harvey we have the large perceptives of the observer and discoverer. He was pre-eminently practical in all things. In Abernethy there is naturally more of the author and physician than of the surgeon, and you feel that he would be more likely to give you advice than to apply the knife. In Hunter, strong, practical common sense, with great Constructiveness, predominates. See how broad the head between the ears. His expression indicates ‘business.’ Sir Astley Cooper looks the scholar, the operator, and the very dignified gentleman which he was. (He was the handsomest man of his day.) Carnochan, the resolute, the prompt, the expert, is large in intellect, high in the crown, and broad at the base; he has perhaps the best natural endowment, and by education is the one best fitted for his profession, among ten thousand. He is, in all respects, ‘the right man in the right place.’
“Dr. Mott, the Quaker surgeon, has a large and well-formed brain, and strong body, with the vital-motive temperament, good mechanical skill, and great self-control, resolution, courage, and sound common sense. Jenner, the thoughtful, the kindly, the sympathetical, and scholarly, has less of the qualities of a surgeon than any of the others.”
For the above interesting facts we are indebted to the “Phrenological Journal.”
Professor Bigelow, of Harvard, has all the requisites in his “make up” of a great surgeon. As a lecturer, Dr. Bigelow is easy and off-handed. He comes into the room without any fuss or airs. He takes up a bone, a femur, perhaps, and after looking at it and turning it round and upside down as though he never saw it before, he finally says, “This is a bone—yes, a bone.” You want to laugh outright at the quaintness of the whole prelude. Then he goes on to tell all about “the bone.” We have not space for more than a mere line sketch of even great men like the above, and but few of those.
The old Country Doctor’s Dress.
The country doctor of the past is interesting in both dress and address. He is almost always, somehow, an elderly gentleman. He devotes little time and attention to dress. We have one in our “mind’s eye” at this moment,—the dear old soul! His head was as white as—Horace Greeley’s; not so bald. His hair he combed by running his fingers though it mornings. His eyes, ears, and mouth were ever open to the call of the needy. His clothes looked as though they belonged to another man, or as if he had lodged in a hotel and there had been a fire, and every man had put on the first clothes he found. His coat belonged to a taller and bigger man, also his pants, while the vest was a boy’s overcoat. His boots were not mates. His lean old spouse looked neat and prim, but as though she had been used for trying every new sample of pill which the doctor’s prolific brain invented.
A CALL ON THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.
I knew another, kind, benevolent old doctor, who startedoff immediately on a call, without adding to or changing his dress. I once saw him seven miles from home in his shirt sleeves in November, driving fiercely along in his gig, as dignified as though dressed in his Sunday coat. If a friend reminded him of his omission, he would smile benevolently, swear as cordially, and drive on. He did not mean to be odd, he did not mean to swear; and the minister, who had talked with him on the subject more than once, had come to that charitable conclusion—for the doctor always made due acknowledgment, and did not forget the contributions and salaries. The doctor was like an innocent old backwoods deacon we have heard of, who, chancing at a village tavern for the first time, heard some extraordinary swearing; and being fascinated by this new accomplishment, he went home, and looking about for an opportunity to put to practical use the new vocabulary, he finally electrified his amiable wife by exclaiming,—
“Lord-all-hell, wife; shut the doors by a dam’ sight!”
PHYSICIANS COSTUME IN 1790.
In regard to shirts, a reliable author tells us that Dr. H. Davy adopted the following planto save time. “He affected not to have time for the ordinary decencies of the toilet. Cold ablutions neither his constitution nor his philosophic temperament required; so he rarely ever washed himself. But the most remarkable fact was on the plea of saving time. When one shirt became too indecently dirty to be seen longerhe used to put a clean one on over it; also the same with stockings and drawers. By spring he would look like the ‘metamorphosis man’ in the circus—big and rotund.
“On rare occasions he would divest himself of his superfluous stock of linen, which occasion was a feast to the washerwoman, but it was a source of perplexity to his less intimate friends, who could not account for his sudden transition from corpulency to tenuity.”
The doctor’s stock of shirts must have equalled Stanford’s.
A California paper tells us that “twenty years ago Leland Stanford arrived in that state with only one shirt to his back. Since then, by close attention to business, he has contrived to accumulate a trifle of ten million.”
What possible use can a man have forten million shirts?
The Earl of Surrey, afterwards eleventh Duke of Norfolk, who was a notorious gormand and hard drinker, and a leading member of the Beefsteak Club, was so far from cleanly in his person that his servants used to avail themselves of his fits of drunkenness—which were pretty frequent, by the way, for the purpose of washing him. On these occasions they stripped him as they would a corpse, and performed the needful ablutions. He was equally notorious for his horror of clean linen. One day, on his complaining to his physician that he had become a perfect martyr to rheumatism, and had tried every possible remedy without success, the latter wittily replied, “Pray, my lord, did you ever try a clean shirt?”
Dr. Davy’s remarkable oddity of dress did not end here. He took to fishing: we have noticed his writing on angling elsewhere. He was often seen on the river’s banks, in season and out of season, “in a costume that must have been a source of no common amusement to the river nymphs. His coat and breeches were of a bright green cloth. His hat was what Dr. Paris describes as ‘having been intended for a coal-heaver, but as having been dyed green, in its rawstate, by some sort of pigment.’ In this attire Davy flattered himself that he closely resembled vegetable life”—which was not intended to scare away the fishes.
HOW POOR TOMMY WAS LOST.
This reminds me of Mrs. Pettigrew’s little boy “Tommy.” Never heard of it? “Well,” says Mrs. Pettigrew, “I never again will dress a child in green. You see,”—very affectedly,—“I used to put a jacket and hood on little Tommy all of beautiful green color, till one day he was playing out on the grass, looking so green and innocent, when along came a cow, and eat poor little Tommy all up, mistaking him for a cabbage.”
Mrs. H. Davy was as curious in dress as the doctor. “One day”—it is told for the truth—“the lady accompanied her husband to Paris, and walking in the Tuileries, wearing the fashionable London bonnet of the period,—shaped like a cockle-shell,—and the doctor dressed in his green, they were mistaken formasqueraders, and a great crowd of astonished Parisians began staring at the couple.
“Their discomfiture had hardly commenced when thegarden inspector informed the lady that nothing of the kind could be permitted on the grounds, and requested a withdrawal.
“The rabble increased, and it became necessary to order a guard of infantry to remove ‘la belle Anglaise’ safely, surrounded by French bayonets.”
BRIDGET’S METHOD OF MENDING STOCKINGS.
A Portland paper tells how a servant girl there mended her stockings. “When a hole appeared in the toe, Bridget tied a string around the stocking below the aperture and cut off the projecting portion. This operation was repeated as often as necessary, each time pulling the stocking down a little, until at last it was nearly all cut away, when Bridget sewed on new legs, and thus kept her stockings always in repair.”
Doctors’ Wigs.
For the space of about three centuries the physician’s wig was his most prominent insignia of office. Who invented it,or why it was invented, I am unable to learn. The namewigis Anglo-Saxon. Hogarth, in his “Undertaker’s Arms,” has given us some correct samples of doctors’ wigs. Of the fifteen heads the only unwigged one is that of a woman—Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter. The one at her left is Taylor, the “quack oculist;” the other at her right is Ward, who got rich on a pill. Mrs. Mapp is sketched in our chapter on Female Doctors. Isn’t she lovely? And how Taylor and Ward lean towards her!
YE ANCIENT DOCTOR.“Each son of Sol, to make him look more big,Wore an enormous, grave, three-tailed wig;His clothes full trimmed, with button-holes behind;Stiff were the skirts, with buckram stoutly lined;The cloth-cut velvet, or more reverend black,Full made and powdered half way down his back;Large muslin cuffs, which near the ground did reach,With half a dozen buttons fixed to each.Grave were their faces—fixed in solemn state;These men struck awe; their children carried weight.In reverend wigs old heads young shoulders bore;And twenty-five or thirty seemed threescore.”
Harvey’s Habits.
I think Harvey should have been represented in a wig. They were worn by doctors in his day, though John Aubrey makes no mention of Dr. Harvey’s wearing one. He (Aubrey) says, “Harvey was not tall, but of a lowly stature; round faced, olive complexion, little eyes, round, black, and very full of spirit. His hair was black as a raven, but quite white twenty years before he died. I remember he was wont to drink coffee with his brother Eliab before coffee-houses were in fashion in London.
“He, with all his brothers, was very choleric, and in younger days wore a dagger, as the fashion then was; but this doctor would be apt to draw out his dagger upon very slight occasions.
THE UNDERTAKER’S ARMS.
“He rodeon horseback, with a foot-cloth, to visit his patients, his footman following, which was then a very decent fashion, now quite discontinued.”
It was not unusual to see a doctor cantering along at a high rate of speed, and his footman running hard at his side, with whom the doctor was keeping up alivelyconversation.
DISPUTE OF THE DOCTOR AND VALET.
Jeaffreson tells the following story of Dr. Brocklesby, also the proprietor of an immense wig. The doctor was suddenly called by the Duchess of Richmond to visit her maid. The doctor was met by the husband of the fair patient, and valet to the duke.
In the hall the doctor and valet fell into a sharp discussion. On the stairs the argument became hotter, for the valet was an intelligent fellow. They became more excited as they neared the sick chamber, which they entered, declaiming at the top of their voices.
The patient was forgotten, though no doubt she lifted her fair head from the pillow to see her undutiful lord disputing with her negligent doctor. The valet poured in sarcasm and irony by the broadside. The doctor, with true Johnny Bull pluck, replied volley for volley, and the battle lasted for above an hour. The doctor went down stairs, the loquacious valet courteously showing him out, when the two separated on the most amiable terms.
Judge of the doctor’s consternation, when, on reaching his own door, the truth flashed across his mind that he had neglected to look at the patient’s tongue, feel her pulse, or, more strange, look for his fee. The valet was so ashamed, when he returned to the chamber, that his invalid wife, instead of scolding him, as he deserved, fell into a laughing fit, and forthwith recovered from her sickness.
I have seen many a patient for whom I thought a right hearty laugh would do more good than all the medicine in the shops.
One William—known as “Bill”—Atkins, a gout doctor, used to strut about the streets of London, about 1650, with a huge gold-headed cane in his hand, and a “stunning” big three-tailed wig on his otherwise bare head. Gout doctoring was profitable in Charles II.’s time.
“Dr. Henry Reynolds, physician to George III., was the Beau Brummell of the faculty, and was the last of the big-wigged and silk-coated doctors. His dress was superb, consisting of a well-powdered wig, silk coat, velvet breeches, white silk stockings, gold-buckled shoes, gold-headed cane, and immaculate lace ruffles.”
Benjamin Franklin had often met and conversed with Reynolds.
Franklin’s Court Dress.
Nathaniel Hawthorne relates an anecdote of the origin of Franklin’s adoption of the customary civil dress, when going to court as a diplomatist. It was simply that his tailor had disappointed him of his court suit, and he wore his plain one, with great reluctance, because he had no other. Afterwards, gaining great success and praise by his mishap, he continued to wear it from policy. The great American philosopher was as big a humbug as the rest of us.
Dr. Jenner’s Dress.
“When I first saw him,” says a writer of his day, “he was dressed in blue coat, yellow buttons and waistcoat, buskins, well-polished boots, with handsome silver spurs. His wig, after the fashion, was done up in a club, and he wore a broad-brimmed hat.”
An Animated Queue.
An old English gentleman told me an amusing story of a wig. A Dr. Wing, who wore a big wig and a long queue, visited a great lady, who was confined to her bed. The lady’s maid was present, having just brought in a bowl of hot gruel. As the old doctor was about to make some remark to the maid, as she held the bowl in her hands, he felt his queue, or tail to his wig, moving, when he turned suddenly round towards the lady, and looking with astonishment at his patient, he said,—
“Madam, were you pulling my tail?”
“Sir!” replied the lady, in equal astonishment and indignation.
Just then the tail gave another flop.
Whirling about like a top whipped by a school-boy, the doctor cried to the maid,—
“Zounds, woman, it wasyouwho pulled my wig!”
“Me, sir!” exclaimed the affrighted lady’s maid.
“Yes, you, you hussy!”
“But, I beg your pardon—”
“Thunder and great guns, madam!” And the doctor whirled back on his pivoted heels towards the more astonished lady, who now had risen from her pillow by great effort, and sat in her night dress, gazing in profound terror upon the supposed drunken or insane doctor. Again the wig swung to and fro, like a clock pendulum. Again the old doctor, now all of a lather of sweat, spun round, and accused the girl of playing a “scaly trick” upon his dignified person.
A WIG MOUSE.
“Sir, do you see that I have both hands full?”
Away went the tail again. The lady saw it moving as though bewitched, and called loudly for help. The greatest consternation prevailed, the doctor alternating his astoundedgaze between the two females; when the queue gave a powerful jerk, and out leaped a big mouse, which went plump into the hot porridge. The maid gave a shrill scream, and dropped the hot liquid upon the doctor’s silk hose, and fled.
The poor, innocent mouse was dead; the doctor was scalded; the lady was in convulsions—of laughter; when the room was suddenly filled by alarmed domestics, from scullion to valet, and all the ladies and gentlemen of the household.
THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.
“What’s the matter?” sternly inquired the master of the house, approaching the bed.
“O, dear, dear!” cried the convalescent, “a mouse was in the doctor’s wig, and—”
“A mouse!” exclaimed the doctor, jerking the offensive wig from his bald pate. “A d—d mouse! I beg a thousand pardons, madam,” turning to the lady, holding the wigby the tail, and giving it a violent shake. He had not seen the mouse jump, and till this moment thought that the lady and maid had conspired to insult him.
A “Character.”
Old Dr. Standish was represented by our authority as “a huge, burly, surly, churlish old fellow, who died at an extremely advanced age in the year 1825.
“He was as unsociable, hoggish an old curmudgeon as ever rode a stout hack. Without a companion, save, occasionally, ‘poor Tom, a Thetford breeches maker,’ ‘he sat every night, for fifty years, in the chief parlor of the Holmnook, in drinking brandy and water, and smoking a “church warden.”’ Occasionally his wife, ‘a quiet, inoffensive little body,’ would object to the doctor’s ways, and, forgetting that she was a woman, offer an opinion of her own.
“On such occasions, Dr. Standish thrashed her soundly with a dog-whip.”
In consequence of too oft repetition of this unpleasantness, she ran away.
“Standish’s mode of riding was characteristic of the man. Straight on he went, at a lumbering, six-miles-an-hour gait,dash, dash, dash, through the muddy roads, sitting loosely in his saddle, heavy and shapeless as a bag of potatoes, looking down at his slouchy brown corduroy breeches and clay-colored boots, the toes of which pointed in opposite directions, with a perpetual scowl on his brow, never vouchsafing a word to a living creature.
“‘Good morning to you, doctor; ’tis a nice day,’ a friendly voice would exclaim.
“‘Ugh!’ Standish would grunt, while on,dash, dash, dash!he rode.
“He never turned out for a wayfarer.
“A frolicsome curate, who had met old Standish, and received nothing but a grunt in reply to his urbane greeting, arranged the following plan to make the doctor speak.
MEETING OF THE DOCTOR AND THE CURATE.
“When riding out one day, he observed Standish coming on with his usual ‘dash, dash, dash,’ and stoical look. The clerical gentleman put spurs to his beast, and charged the man of pills and pukes at full tilt. Within three feet of Standish’s horse’s nose, the young curate reined suddenly up. The doctor’s horse, as anticipated, came to a dead halt, when the burly body of old Standish rolled into the muddy highway, going clean over the horse’s head.
“‘Ugh!’ grunted the doctor.
“‘Good morning,’ said the curate, good-humoredly.
“The doctor picked himself out of the mire, and, with a volley of expletives ‘too numerous to mention,’ clambered on to his beast, and trotted on,dash, dash, dash!as though nothing had happened.”