class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg xi]"/> they sympathise all hearts, entwining them in a cheerful and lasting community of soul and sentiment. The pipe and the box give a vigour to the mind, and a language to its ideas. They give harmony a tone, and discord a silence. They inspire the bold, and encourage the diffident. Yes! through their agency alone, all these benefits are received and experienced. In short, they express in one breath, superlative happiness. A few illustrations will suffice:

A man in public company wishing to give utterance to some particular opinion or sentiment, invariably finds the pipe or the pinch the best prompter. A man wishing to be silent, in meditation finds the pipe his excuser. A man in anger with himself, his family, or the public, the pipe or the pinch will generally restore to kindness. A man desirous of meeting a friend, need but give him a “pinch,” and the heart is at once opened to his reception. A man in misfortune, either in sickness or in circumstances, will learn philosophy from the pipe, and count upon the latter, at least, as his own: in this case, from both tobacco and snuff, he borrows an independent vigour, and a cheerfulness that shines even in the sadness of his heart. The impregnative spirit of tobacco will wind its way to the most secret recesses of the brain, and impart to the imagination a soft and gentle glow of heat, equally remote from the dullness of fervor, and the madness of intoxication; for to these two extremes, without the moderative medium of the pipe, an author’s fancy will alternately expand itself. To the man of letters, therefore, the pipe is a sovereign remedy.

Amongst the incidental benefits of the pipe and box, may also be noticed their great advantages in a converzatione; they smooth the arrogance of an apostrophe, and soften the virulence of a negative, give strength to an ejaculation, and confidence to a whisper. In short, they extract the sting, and purify the spirit, which are too frequently inhering concomitants, in the common associations of life.

In conclusion, fully impressed with the sovereign consequence of his subject, the Author taketh his leave of the reader with the assurance, if his labours meet their due object, viz. imparting of the entire History of the much-aspersed, yet idolized herb, to its votaries, it will give him infinite pleasure. Should he not be so fortunate in upholding by that means,—

——the grand cause,
I smokes—I snuffs—I chaws,—

Philosophy still offers him consolation for the degeneracy of the times, in a pinch of Lundyfoot, or the fumes of his Merschaum.

Newington, Oct. 1831.

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