"Throw it into the Seine, when you get it, rather than pay it to the liar for selling your father out of a place he was never in! He is safe, believe me, if he was the good man you say. Do not disturb yourself, Jacqueline."

"He never harmed a soul. And we loved him that way a bad man could not be loved."

As Jacqueline said this, a smile more sad than joyful passed over her face, and disappeared.

"He rests in peace," said Victor Le Roy.

"It is what I must believe. But what if there should be a mistake about it? It was all I was working for."

"Think for yourself, Jacqueline. No matter what Leclerc thinks or I think. Can you suppose that Jesus Christ requires any such thing as this of you, that you should make a slave of yourself for the expiation of your father? It is a monstrous thought. Doubt not it was love that took him away so quickly. And love can care for him. Long before this, doubtless, he has heard the words, 'Come, ye blessed of my father!' And what is required of you, do you ask? You shall be merciful to them that live; and trust Him that He will care for those who have gone beyond your reach. Is it so? Do I understand you? You have been thinking to buy this good gift of God, eternal life for your father, when of course you could have nothing to do with it. You have been imposed upon, and robbed all this while, and this is the amount of it."

"Well, do not speak so. If what you say is true,—and I think it may be,—what is past is past."

"But won't you see what an infernal lie has been practised on you, and all the rest of us who had any conscience or heart in us, all this while? There is no purgatory; and it is nonsense to think, that, if there were, money could buy a man out of it. Jesus Christ is the one sole atonement for sin. And by faith in Him shall a man save his soul alive. That is the only way. If I lose my soul, and am gone, the rest is between me and God. Do you see it should be so, and must be so, Jacqueline?"

"He was a good man," said Jacqueline.

She did not find it quite easy to make nothing of all this matter, which had been the main-spring of her effort since her father died. She could not in one instant drop from her calculations that on which she had heretofore based all her activity. She had labored so long, so hard, to buy the rest and peace and heavenly blessedness of the father she loved, it was hardly to be expected that at once she would choose to see that in that rest and peace and blessedness, she, as a producing power, had no part whatever.

As she more than hinted, the purpose of her life seemed to be taken from her. She could not perceive that fact without some consternation; could not instantly connect it with another, which should enable her to look around her with the deliberation of a liberated spirit, choosing her new work. And in this she was acted upon by more than the fear arising from the influences of her old belief. Of course she should have been, and yet she was not, able to drop instantly and forever from recollection the constant sacrifices she had made, the deprivation she had endured, with heroic persistence,—the putting far away every personal indulgence whose price had a market value. Her father was not the only person concerned in this work; the priest; herself. She had believed in the pastor of Domremy. Yet he had deceived her. Else he was self-deceived; and what if the blind should strive to lead the blind? Could she accept the new faith, the great freedom, with perfect rejoicing?

Victor Le Roy seemed to have some suspicion of what was passing in her thoughts. He did not need to watch her changeful face in order to understand them.

"I advise you to still think of this," said he. "Recall your father's life, and then ask yourself if it is likely that He who is Love requires the sacrifice of your youth and your strength before your father shall receive from Him what He has promised to give to all who trust in Him. Take God at his word, and you will be obliged to give up all this priest-trash."

IV.

Victor Le Roy spoke these words quietly, as if aware that he might safely leave them, as well as any other true words, to the just sense of Jacqueline.

She was none the happier for them when she returned that night to the little city room, the poor lodging whose high window overlooked both town and country, city streets and harvest-fields, and the river flowing on beyond the borders of the town,—no happier through many a moment of thinking, until, as it were by an instant illumination, she began to see the truth of the matter, as some might wonder she did not instantly perceive it, if they could omit from observation this leading fact, that the orphan girl was Jacqueline Gabrie, child of the Church, and not a wise and generous person, who had never been in bondage to superstitions.

For a long time after her return to her lodging she was alone. Elsie was in the street with the rest of the town, talking, as all were talking, of the sight that Meaux should see to-morrow.

Besides Jacqueline, there was hardly another person in this great building, six stories high, every room of which had usually a tenant at this hour. She sat by her window, and looked at the dusky town, over which the moon was rising. But her thoughts were far away; over many a league they wandered.

Once more she stood on the playground of her toilsome childhood. She recalled many a year of sacrificing drudgery, which now she could not name such,—for another reason than that which had heretofore prevented her from calling it a sacrifice. She remembered these years of wrong and of extortion,—they received their proper name now,—years whose mirth and leisure she had quietly foregone, but during which she had borne a burden that saddened youth, while it also dignified it,—a burden which had made her heart's natural cheerfulness the subject of self-reproach, and her maiden dreams and wishes matter for tears, for shame, for confession, for prayer.

Now Victor Le Roy's words came to her very strangely; powerfully they moved her. She believed them in this solitude, where at leisure she could meditate upon them. A vision more fair and blessed than she had ever imagined rose before her. There was no suffering in it, and no sorrow; it was full of peace. Already, in the heaven to which she had hoped her toil would give him at length admission, her father had found his home. There was a glory in his rest not reflected from her filial love, but from the all-availing love of Christ.

Then—delay the rigor of your judgment!—she began,—yes, she, this Jacqueline, began to count the cost of what she had done. She was not a sordid soul, she had not a miserly nature. Before she had gone far in that strange computation, she paused abruptly, with a crimsoned face, and not with tearless eyes. Counting the cost! Estimating the sacrifice! Had, then, her purpose been less holy because excited by falsehood and sustained through delusion? Was she less loving and less true, because deceived? And was she to lament that Christ, the one and only Priest, rather than another instrumentality, was the deliverer of her beloved from the power of death?

No ritual was remembered, and no formula consulted, when she cried out,—"It is so! and I thank Thee! Only give me now, my Jesus, a purpose as holy as that Thou hast taken away!"

But she had not come into her chamber to spend a solitary evening there. Turning away from the window, she bestowed a little care upon her person, smoothed away the traces of her day's labor, and after all was done she lingered yet longer. She was going out, evidently. Whither? To visit the mother of John Leclerc. She must carry back the tracts the good woman had lent her. Their contents had firm lodgement in her memory.

Others might run to and fro in the streets, and talk about the corners, and prognosticate with passion, and defy, in the way of cowardice, where safety rather than the truth is well assured. If one woman could console another, Jacqueline wished that she might console Leclerc's mother. And if any words of wisdom could drop from the poor old woman's lips while her soul was in this strait, Jacqueline desired to hear those words.

Down the many flights of stairs she went across the court, and then along the street, to the house where the wool-comber lived.

A brief pause followed her knock for admittance. She repeated it. Then was heard a sound from within,—a step crossing the floor. The door opened, and there stood the mother of Leclerc, ready to face any danger, the very Fiend himself.

But when she saw that it was Jacqueline, only Jacqueline,—an angel, as one might say, and not a devil,—the terrible look passed from her face; she opened the door wide.

"Come in, child! come in!"

So Jacqueline went into the room where John had worked and thought, reasoned, argued, prayed.

This is the home of the man because of whom many are this night offended in the city of Meaux. This is the place whence issued the power that has set the tongues to talking, and the minds to thinking, and the hearts to hoping, and the authorities to avenging.

A grain of mustard-seed is the kingdom of heaven in a figure; the wandering winds a symbol of the Pentecostal power: a dove did signify the descent of God to man. This poor chamber, so pent in, and so lowly, so obscure, has its significance. Here has a life been lived; and not the least does it import, that walls are rough and the ceiling low.

But the life of John Leclerc was not to be limited. A power has stood here which by its freedom has set at defiance the customary calculation of the worldly-wise. In high places and in low the people are this night disturbed because of him who has dared to lift his voice in the freedom of the speech of God. In drawing-rooms odorous with luxury the man's name has mention, and the vulgarity of his liberated speech and courageous faith is a theme to move the wonder and excite the reprobation of hearts whose languid beating keeps up their show of life, —to what sufficient purpose expect me not to tell. His voice is loud and harsh to echo through these music-loving halls; it rends and tears, with almost savage strength, the dainty silences.

But busier tongues are elsewhere more vehement in speech; larger hearts beat faster indignation; grief and vulgarest curiosity are all manifesting themselves after their several necessity. In solitary places heroes pray throughout the night, wrestling like Jacob, agonizing like Saul, and with some of them the angel left his blessing; for some the golden harp was struck that soothed their souls to peace. Angels of heaven had work to do that night. Angels of heaven and hell did prove themselves that night in Meaux: night of unrest and sleeplessness, or of cruel dreaming; night of bloody visions, tortured by the apprehension of a lacerated body driven through the city streets, and of the hooting shouts of Devildom; night haunted by a gory image,—the defiled temple of the Holy Ghost.

Did the prospect of torture keep him wakeful? Could the man bear the disgrace, the derision, shouting, agony? Was there nothing in this thought, that as a witness of Jesus Christ he was to appear next day, that should soothe him even unto slumber? Upon the silence of his guarded chamber let none but ministering angels break. Sacred to him, and to Him who watched the hours of the night, let the night go!

But here—his mother, Jacqueline with her—we may linger with these.

V.

When the old woman saw that it was Jacqueline Gabrie who stood waiting admittance, she opened the door wider, as I said; and the dark solemnity of her countenance seemed to be, by so much as a single ray, enlivened for an instant.

She at once perceived the tracts which Jacqueline had brought. Aware of this, the girl said,—

"I stayed to hear them read, after I heard that for the sake of the truth in them"—she hesitated—"this city will invite God's wrath to-morrow."

And she gave the papers to the old woman, who took them in silence.

By-and-by she asked,—

"Are you just home, Jacqueline?"

"Since sunset,—though it was nearly dark when I came in,"—she answered. "Victor Le Roy was down by the riverbank, and he read them for me."

"He wanted to get out of town, maybe. You would surely have thought it was a holiday, Jacqueline, if you could have seen the people. Anything for a show: but some of them might well lament. Did you want to know the truth he pays so dear for teaching? But you have heard it, my child."

"We all heard what he must pay for it, in the fields at noon. Yes, mother, I wanted to know."

"But if you shall believe it, Jacqueline, it may lead you into danger, into sad straits," said the old woman, looking at the young girl with earnest pity in her eyes.

She loved this girl, and shuddered at the thought of exposing her to danger.

Jacqueline had nursed her neighbor, Antonine, and more than once, after a hard day's labor, which must be followed by another, she had sat with her through the night; and she could pay this service only with love, and the best gift of her love was to instruct her in the truth. John and she had proved their grateful interest in her fortunes by giving her that which might expose her to danger, persecution, and they could not foresee to what extremity of evil.

And now the old woman felt constrained to say this to her, even for her love's sake,—"It may lead you into danger."

"But if truth is dangerous, shall I choose to be safe?" answered Jacqueline, with stately courage.

"It is truth. It will support him. Blessed be Jesus Christ and His witnesses! To-night, and to-morrow, and the third day, our Jesus will sustain him. They think John will retract. They do not know my son. They do not know how he has waited, prayed, and studied to learn the truth, and how dear it is to him. No, Jacqueline, they do not. But when they prove him, they will know. And if he is willing to witness, shall I not be glad? The people will understand him better afterward,—and the priests, maybe. 'I can do all things,' said he, 'Christ strengthening me'; and that was said long ago, by one who was proved. Where shall you be, Jacqueline?"

"Oh," groaned Jacqueline, "I shall be in the fields at work, away from these cruel people, and the noise and the sight. But, mother, where shall you be?"

"With the people, child. With him, if I live. Yes, he is my son; and I have never been ashamed of the brave boy. I will not be ashamed to-morrow. I will follow John; and when they bind him, I will let him see his mother's eyes are on him,—blessing him, my child!—Hark! how they talk through the streets!—Jacqueline, he was never a coward. He is strong, too. They will not kill him, and they cannot make him dumb. He will hold the truth the faster for all they do to him. Jesus Christ on his side, do you think he will fear the city, or all Paris, or all France? He does not know what it is to be afraid. And when God opened his eyes to the truth of his gospel, which the priests had hid, he meant that John should work for it,—for he is a working-man, whatever he sets about."

So this old woman tried, and not without success, to comfort herself, and sustain her tender, proud, maternal heart. The dire extremity into which she and her son had fallen did not crush her; few were the tears that fell from her eyes as she recalled for Jacqueline the years of her son's boyhood,—told her of his courage, as in various ways it had made itself manifest: how he had always been fearless in danger,—a conqueror of pain,—seemingly regardless of comfort,—fond of contemplation,—contented with his humble state,—kindly, affectionate, generous, but easily stirred to wrath by injustice, when manifested by the strong toward the weak,—or by cruelty, or by falsehood.

Many an anecdote of his career might she relate; for his character, under the pressure of this trial, which was as searching and severe a test of her faith as of his, seemed to illustrate itself in manifold heroic ways, all now of the highest significance. With more majesty and grandeur his character arose before her; for now in all the past, as she surveyed it, she beheld a living power, a capability, and a necessity of new and grand significance, and her heart reverenced the spirit she had nursed into being.

Removed to the distance of a prison from her sight, separated from her love by bolts and bars, and the wrath of tyranny and close-banded bigotry, he became a power, a hero, who moved her, as she recalled his sentence, and prophesied the morrow, to a feeling tears could not explain.

They passed the night together, the young woman and the old. In the morning Jacqueline must go into the field again. She was in haste to go. Leaving a kiss on the old woman's cheek, she was about to steal away in silence; but as she laid her hand upon the latch, a thought arrested her, and she did not open the door, but went back and sat beside the window, and watched the mother of Leclerc through the sleep that must be brief. It was not in her heart to go away and leave those eyes to waken upon solitude. She must see a helpful hand and hopeful face, and, if it might be, hear a cheerful human voice, in the dawning of that day.

She had not long to wait, and the time she may have lost in waiting Jacqueline did not count or reckon, when she heard her name spoken, and could answer, "What wilt thou? here am I."

Not in vain had she lingered. What were wages, more or less, that they should be mentioned, thought of, when she might give and receive here what the world gives not, and never has to give,—and what a mortal cannot buy, the treasure being priceless? Through the quiet of that morning hour, soothing words, and strong, she felt and knew to speak; and when at last she hurried away from the city to the fields, she was stronger than of nature, able to bear witness to the faith that speaks from the bewilderment of its distresses, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

Not alone had her young, frank, loving eyes enlivened the dreary morning to the heart of Leclerc's mother. Grace for grace had she received. And words of the hymn that were always on John's lips had found echo from his mother's memory this morning: they lodged in the heart of Jacqueline. She went away repeating,—

"In the midst of death, the jaws Of hell against us gape. Who from peril dire as this Openeth us escape? 'Tis thou, O Lord, alone! Our bitter suffering and our sin Pity from thy mercy win, Holy Lord and God! Strong and holy God! Merciful and holy Saviour! Eternal God! Let us not despair For the fire that burneth there! Kyrie, eleison!"

Jacqueline met Elsie on her way to the fields. But the girls had not much to say to each other that morning in their walk. Elsie was manifestly conscious of some great constraint; she might have reported to her friend what she had heard in the streets last night, but she felt herself prevented from such communication,—seemed to be intent principally on one thing: she would not commit herself in any direction. She was looking with suspicion upon Jacqueline. Whatever became of her soul, her body she would save alive. She was waking to this world's enjoyment with vision alert, senses keen. Martyrdom in any degree was without attraction to her, and in Truth she saw no beauty that she should desire it. It was a root out of dry ground indeed, that gave no promise of spreading into goodly shelter and entrancing beauty.

As to Jacqueline, she was absorbed in her heroic and exalted thoughts. Her heart had almost failed her when she said farewell to John's mother; tearfully she had hurried on her way. One vast cloud hung between her and heaven; darkly rolled the river; every face seemed to bear witness to the tragedy that day should witness.

Not the least of her affliction was the consciousness of the distance increasing between herself and Elsie Meril. She knew that Elsie was rejoicing that she had in no way endangered herself yet; and sure was she that in no way would Elsie invite the fury of avenging tyranny and reckless superstition.

Jacqueline asked her no questions,—spoke few words to her,—was absorbed in her own thoughts. But she was kindly in her manner, and in such words as she spoke. So Elsie perceived two things,—that she should not lose her friend, neither was in danger of being seized by the heretical mania. It was her way of drawing inferences. Certain that she had not lost her friend, because Jacqueline did not look away, and refuse to recognize her; congratulating herself that she was not the object of suspicion, either justly or unjustly, among the dreadful priests.

But that friend whose steady eye had balanced Elsie was already sick at heart, for she knew that never more must she rely upon this girl who came with her from Domremy.

As they crossed the bridge, lingering thereon a moment, the river seemed to moan in its flowing toward Meaux. The day's light was sombre; the birds' songs had no joyous sound,—plaintive was their chirping; it saddened the heart to hear the wind,—it was a wind that seemed to take the buoyancy and freshness out of every living thing, an ugly southeast wind. They went on together,—to the wheat-fields together;—it was to be day of minutes to poor Jacqueline.

To be away from Meaux bodily was, it appeared, only that the imagination might have freer exercise. Yes,—now the people must be moving through the streets; shopmen were not so intent on profits this day as they were on other days. The priests were thinking with vengeful hate of the wrong to themselves which should be met and conquered that day. The people should be swiftly brought into order again! John in his prison was preparing, as all without the prison were.

The crowd was gathering fast. He would soon be led forth. The shameful march was forming. Now the brutal hand of Power was lifted with scourges. The bravest man in Meaux was driven through the streets,—she saw with what a visage,—she knew with what a heart. Her heart was awed with thinking thereupon. A bloody mist seemed to fall upon the environs of Meaux; through that red horror she could not penetrate; it shrouded and it held poor Jacqueline.

Of the faith that would sustain him she began once more to inquire. It is not by a bound that mortals ever clear the heights of God. Step by step they scale the eminences, toiling through the heavenly atmosphere. Only around the summit shines the eternal sun.

So she must now recall the words that Victor Le Roy read for her last night; and the words he spoke from out his heart,—these also. And she did not fear now, as yesterday, to ask for light. Let the light dawn,—oh, let it shine on her!

The mother of Leclerc had uttered mysterious words which Jacqueline took for truth; the light was joyful and blessed, and of all things to be desired, though it smote the life from one like lightning. She waited alone with faith, watching till it should come,—left alone with this beam glimmering like a moth through darkness!—for thus was a believer, or one who resolved on believing, left in that day, when he turned from the machinery of the Church, and stood alone, searching for God without the aid of priestly intervention.

VI.

There was something awful in such loneliness.

Jacqueline knew little of it until now, as she walked toward the fields, by the side of Elsie Meril.

She saw how she had depended on the priest of Domremy, as he had been the lawgiver and the leader of her life. A spiritual life, to be sustained only by the invisible spirit, to be lived by faith, not in man, but in God, without intervention of saint or angel or Blessed Virgin,—was the world's life liberated by such freedom?

By faith, and not by sight, the just must live. Would He bow his heavens and come down to dwell with the contrite and the humble?

Wondrous strange it seemed,—incomprehensible,—more than she could manage or control. There are prisoners whose pardon proves the world too large for them: they find no rest until their prison-door is opened for them again.

Of this class was Elsie,—not Jacqueline. Elsie was afraid of freedom,—not equal to it,—unable to deal with it; satisfied with being a child, with being a slave, when it came to be a question whether she should accept and use her highest privilege and dignity. At this hour, and among all persuasions, you will find that Elsie does not stand alone. Little children there are, long as the world shall stand,—though not precisely such as we think of when we remember, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

It was enough for Elsie—it is enough for multitudes through all the reformations—that she had an earthly defence, even such as she relied on without trouble. She lived in the hour. She had never toiled to deliver her darling from the lions,—to redeem a soul from purgatory. She eased her conscience, when it was troubled, by such shallow discovery of herself as she deemed confession. She loved dancing, and all other amusements,—hated solitude, knew not the meaning of self-abnegation. And let her dance and enjoy herself!—some service to the body is rendered thereby. She might do greatly worse, and is incapable of doing greatly better. Will you stint the idiots of comfort,—or rather build them decent habitations, and even vex yourself to feed and clothe them, in reverent confidence that the Future shall surely take them up and bless them, unstop their ears, open their eyes, give speech to them and absolute deliverance?

There are others beside Elsie who congratulate themselves on non-committal,—they covet not the advanced and dangerous positions. Honorable, but dangerous positions! The head might be taken off, do you not see? And could all eternity compensate for the loss of time? Ah, the body might be mutilated,—the liberty restrained: as if, indeed, a man's freedom were not eternally established, when his enemies, howling around, must at least crucify him! as if a divine voice were not ever heard through the raging of the people, saying, "Come up higher!"

But a fern-leaf cannot grow into a mighty hemlock-tree. From the ashes of a sparrow the phoenix shall not rise. You will not to all eternity, by any artificial means, nor by a miracle, bring forth an eagle from a mollusk.

There was not a sadder heart in all those fields of Meaux than the heart of Jacqueline Gabrie. There was not a stronger heart. Not a hand labored more diligently. Under the broad-brimmed peasant-hat was a sad countenance,—under the peasant-dress a heavily burdened spirit. Silent, all day, she labored. She was alone at noon under the river-bordered trees, eating her coarse fare without zest, but with a conscience,—to sustain the body that was born to toil. But in the maelstroem of doubt and anxiety was she tossed and whirled, and she cared not for her life. To be rid of it, now for the first time, she felt might be a blessing. What purpose, indeed, had she? She turned her thought from this question, but it would not let her alone. Again and yet again she turned to meet it, and thus would surely have at length its satisfying answer.

John Leclerc might pass through this ordeal, as from the first she had expected of him. But she listened to the speech of many of her fellow-laborers. Some prophecies which had a sound incredible escaped them. She did not credit them, but they tormented her. They contended with one another. John, some foretold, would certainly retract. One day of public whipping would suffice. When the blood began to flow, he would see his duty clearer! The men were prophesying from the depths and the abundance of their self-consciousness. Others speculated on the final result of the executed sentence. They believed that the "obstinacy" and courage of the man would provoke his judges, and the executors of his sentence,—that with rigor they would execute it,—and that, led on by passion, and provoked by such as would side with the victim, the sentence would terminate in his destruction. Sooner or later, nothing but his life would be found ultimately to satisfy his enemies.

It might be so, thought Jacqueline Gabrie. What then? what then?—she thought. There was inspiration to the girl in that cruel prophecy. Her lifework was not ended. If Christ was the One Ransom, and it did truly fall on Him, and not on her, to care for those beloved, departed from this life, her work was still for love.

John Leclerc disabled or dead, who should care then for his aged mother? Who should minister to him? Who, indeed, but Jacqueline?

Living or dying, she said to herself, with grand enthusiasm,—living or dying, let him do the Master's pleasure! She also was here to serve that Master; and while in spiritual things he fed the hungry, clothed the naked, gave the cup of living water, visited the imprisoned, and the sick of sin, she would bind herself to minister to him and his old mother in temporal things; so should he live above all cares save those of heavenly love. She could support them all by her diligence, and in this there would be joy.

She thought this through her toil; and the thought was its own reward. It strengthened her like an angel,—strengthened heart and faith. She labored as no other peasant-woman did that day,—like a beast of burden, unresisting, patient,—like a holy saint, so peaceful and assured, so conscious of the present very God!

[To be continued.]

* * * * *



MIDSUMMER.

Around this lovely valley rise The purple hills of Paradise. Oh, softly on yon banks of haze Her rosy face the Summer lays! Becalmed along the azure sky, The argosies of cloudland lie, Whose shores, with many a shining rift, Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift.

Through all the long midsummer-day The meadow-sides are sweet with hay. I seek the coolest sheltered seat Just where the field and forest meet,— Where grow the pine-trees tall and bland, The ancient oaks austere and grand, And fringy roots and pebbles fret The ripples of the rivulet.

I watch, the mowers as they go Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row; With even stroke their scythes they swing, In tune their merry whetstones ring; Behind the nimble youngsters run And toss the thick swaths in the sun; The cattle graze; while, warm and still, Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill, And bright, when summer breezes break, The green wheat crinkles like a lake.

The butterfly and humble-bee Come to the pleasant woods with me; Quickly before me runs the quail, The chickens skulk behind the rail, High up the lone wood-pigeon sits, And the woodpecker pecks and flits. Sweet woodland music sinks and swells, The brooklet rings its tinkling bells, The swarming insects drone and hum, The partridge beats his throbbing drum. The squirrel leaps among the boughs, And chatters in his leafy house. The oriole flashes by; and, look! Into the mirror of the brook, Where the vain blue-bird trims his coat, Two tiny feathers fall and float.

As silently, as tenderly, The down of peace descends on me. Oh, this is peace! I have no need Of friend to talk, of book to read: A dear Companion here abides; Close to my thrilling heart He hides; The holy silence is His Voice: I lie and listen, and rejoice.



TOBACCO.

"Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases! a good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used. But as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lauds, health: hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul!"—BURTON. Anatomy of Melancholy.

A delicate subject? Very true; and one which must be handled as tenderly as biscuit de Sevres, or Venetian glass. Whichever side of the question we may assume, as the most popular, or the most right, the feelings of so large and respectable a minority are to be consulted, that it behooves the critic or reviewer to move cautiously, and, imitating the actions of a certain feline household reformer, to show only the patte de velours.

The omniscient Burton seems to have reached the pith of the matter. The two hostile sections of his proposition, though written so long since, would very well fit the smoker and the reformer of to-day. That portion of the world which is enough advanced to advocate reforms is entirely divided against itself on the subject of Tobacco. Immense interests, economical, social, and, as some conceive, moral, are arrayed on either side. The reformers have hitherto had the better of it in point of argument, and have pushed the attack with most vigor, yet with but trifling results. Smokers and chewers, et id omne genus, mollified by their habits, or laboring under guilty consciences, have made but a feeble defence. Nor in all this is there anything new. It is as old as the knowledge of the "weed" among thinking men,—in other words, about three centuries. The English adventurers under Drake and Raleigh and Hawkins, and the multitude of minor Protestant "filibusters" who followed in their train, had no sooner imported the habit of smoking tobacco, among the other outlandish customs which they brought home from the new Indies and the Spanish Main, than the higher powers rebuked the practice, which novelty and its own fascinations were rendering so fashionable, in language more forcible than elegant. The philippic of King James is so apposite that we may be pardoned for transcribing one oft-quoted sentence:—"But herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's good gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be wilfully corrupted by this stinking smoke.... A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmfull to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof neerest resembling the horrible Stygian smoake of the pit that is bottomless."[a]

[Footnote a: Counterblast to Tobacco.]

The Popes Urban VIII. and Innocent XII. fulminated edicts of excommunication against all who used tobacco in any form; from which we may conclude that the new habit was spreading rapidly over Christendom. And not only the successors of St. Peter, but those also of the Prophet, denounced the practice, the Sultan Amurath IV. making it punishable with death. The Viziers of Turkey spitted the noses of smokers with their own pipes; the more considerate Shah of Persia cut them entirely off. The knout greeted in Russia the first indulgence, and death followed the second offence. In some of the Swiss cantons smoking was considered a crime second only to adultery. Modern republics are not quite so severe.

It is not to be supposed that in England the royal pamphlet had its desired effect. For we find that James laid many rigid sumptuary restrictions upon the practice which he abominated, based chiefly upon the extravagance it occasioned,—the expenses of some smokers being estimated at several hundred pounds a year. The King, however, had the sagacity to secure a preemption-right as early as 1620.

Yet how could the practice but have increased, when, as Malcolm relates the tradition, such men as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Hugh Middleton sat smoking at their doors?—for "the public manner in which it was exhibited, and the aromatic flavor inhaled by the passengers, exclusive of the singularity of the circumstance and the eminence of the parties," could hardly have failed to favor its dissemination.

The silver-tongued Joshua Sylvester hoped to aid the royal cause by writing a poem entitled, "Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered, (about their ears who idly idolize so base and barbarous a weed, or at least-wise overlove so loathsome a vanity,) by a volley of holy shot thundered from Mount Helicon." If the smoothness of the verses equalled the euphony of the title, this must have proved a moving appeal.

Stow contents himself with calling tobacco "a stinking weed, so much abused to God's dishonor."

Burton exhausts the subject in a single paragraph. Ben Jonson, though a jolly good fellow, was opposed to the habit of smoking. But Spenser mentions "divine tobacco." Walton's "Piscator" indulges in a pipe at breakfast, and "Venator" has his tobacco brought from London to insure its purity. Sweet Izaak could have selected no more soothing minister than the pipe to the "contemplative man's recreation."

As the new sedative gains in esteem, we find Francis Quarles, in his "Emblems," treating it in this serio-comic vein:—

"Flint-hearted Stoics, you whose marble eyes Contemn a wrinkle, and whose souls despise To follow Nature's too affected fashion, Or travel in the regent walk of passion,— Whose rigid hearts disdain to shrink at fears, Or play at fast-and-loose with smiles and tears,— Come, burst your spleens with laughter to behold A new-found vanity, which days of old Ne'er knew,—a vanity that has beset The world, and made more slaves than Mahomet,— That has condemned us to the servile yoke Of slavery, and made us slaves to smoke, But stay! why tax I thus our modern times For new-born follies and for new-born crimes? Are we sole guilty, and the first age free? No: they were smoked and slaved as well as we. What's sweet-lipped honor's blast, but smoke? what's treasure, But very smoke? and what's more smoke than pleasure?"

Brand gives us the whole matter in a nutshell, in the following quaint epigram, entitled "A Tobacconist," taken from an old collection:—

"All dainty meats I do defy Which feed men fat as swine; He is a frugal man, indeed, That on a leaf can dine.

"He needs no napkin for his hands His fingers' ends to wipe, That keeps his kitchen in a box, And roast meat in a pipe."

And so on, the singers of succeeding years, usque ad nauseam,—a loathing equalled only by that of the earlier writers for the plant, now so lauded.

Tobacco-worship seems to us to culminate in the following stanza from a German song:—

"Tabak ist mein Leben, Dem hab' ich mich ergeben, ergeben; Tabak ist meine Lust. Und eh' ich ihn sollt' lassen, Viel lieber wollt' ich hassen, Ja, hassen selbst eines Maedchens Kuss."

As it is with your sex, my dear Madam, that this question of Tobacco is to be mainly argued,—for, to your honor be it spoken, you have always been of the reformatory party,—let us hope, that, provided you have not read or translated the last verse, you have recovered your natural amiability, ruffled perhaps by this odious subject, and are prepared to believe us when we tell you that these opposite opinions cannot be wholly reconciled, and to follow us patiently while we attempt to show that a certain gentleman, introduced to your maternal ancestor at a very remote period of the world's history, is not so black as he is sometimes painted. Let us keep good-natured, at least, in this discussion; for we propose to settle it without taking off the gloves, as we intimated in the opening paragraph. Your patience will be much needed for the sad army of facts and figures which is to follow. Therefore it is but just that you should speak now, after these long sentences.

Your George will never smoke? Excuse me. When he will smoke depends upon the precocity of his individual generation; and that increases in a direct ratio with time itself, in this country. Thus, to state the matter in an approximate inverse arithmetical progression, and dating the birth of "young America" about the year 1825,—previously to which reigned the dark ages of oldfogydom, so called,—we find as follows: —From 1825 to 1835, young gentlemen learned to smoke when from 25 to 20 years of age; from 1835 to 1845, young gents, ditto, ditto, from 20 to 15 years; 1845 to 1855, from 15 to 10; 1855 to 1865, 10 to 5; 1865 to 1875, 5 to 0; and, if we continue, 1875 to 1885, zero to minus: but really the question is becoming too nebulous. Corollary. In about ten years, the youth of the United States will smoke contemporaneously with the infant Burmese, who, we are credibly informed, begin the habit aet. 3, or as soon as they have cut enough teeth to hold a cigar.

Therefore, we will say, Madam, at some indefinite period of his childhood or youth,—for we would not be so impolite as to infer your age by asking that of your son,—the susdit George will come home late from play some afternoon, languid, pale, and disinclined for tea. He will indignantly repel the accusation of feeling ill, and there will lurk about his person an indescribable odor of stale cinnamon, which you will be at a loss to account for, but which his elder brother will recognize as the natural result of smoking "cinnamon cigars," wherewith certain wicked tobacconists of this city tempt curious youth. If you follow him to his chamber, you will probably discover more damning evidence of his guilt.

We will draw the curtain over the scene of the Spartan mother—we hope you belong to that nearly extinct class—which is to follow. Let us suppose all differences settled, the habit ostensibly given up, and your darling, grown more honest or more artful,—the result is the same to your blissful ignorance,—studiously pursuing his way until he enters college. Some fine day you drive over to the neighboring university, and, entering his room unannounced, you find him coloring his first (factitious) meerschaum!—also a sad deficiency in his wardrobe of half-worn clothes. C'est une pipe qui coute cher a culotter, the college meerschaum,—and in more ways than one, according to the "Autocrat":—"I do not advise you, young man, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe," et seq. More bold, the Sophomore will smoke openly at home; and by the end of the third vacation, it is one of those unyielding faits accomplis against which reformers, household or peripatetic, beat their heads in vain.

Perhaps your husband smokes? If so, at what period of the twenty-four hours have you invariably found Mr. —— most lenient to your little pecuniary peccadilloes? Is he not always most good-natured when his cigar is about one-third consumed, the ash evenly burnt and adherent, and not fallen into his shirt-bosom? Depend upon it, tobacco is a great soother of domestic differences.

Let us, then, look an existing, firmly rooted evil—if you will call it so—in the face, and see if it is quite so bad as it is represented. It is too wide-spread to be sneered away,—for we might almost say that smokers were the rule, and non-smokers the exception, among all civilized men, Charles Kingsley supports us here:—"'Man a cooking animal,' my dear Doctor Johnson? Pooh! man is a smoking animal. There is his ergon, his 'differential energy,' as the Aristotelians say,—his true distinction from the orangoutang. Ponder it well."

Query.—What did the old Roman do without a cigar? How idle through the day? How survive his interminable post-coenal potations?—The thought is not our own. It occurs somewhere in De Quincey, we believe. It is one of those self-evident propositions you wonder had not occurred to you before.—What an accessory of luxury the pipe would have been to him who passed the livelong day under the mosaic arches of the Thermoe! The strigiles would have vanished before the meerschaum, had that magic clay then been known. How completely would the hookah and the narghileh have harmonized with the crater, cyathi, and tripods of the triclinium in that portraiture of the "Decadence of Rome" which hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery! Poor fellows! they managed to exist without them.

Though pipes are found carved on very old sculptures in China, and the habit of smoking was long since extensively followed there, according to Pallas, and although certain species of the tobacco-plant, as the Nicotiana rustica, would appear to be indigenous to the country, yet we have the best reason to conclude that America, if not the exclusive home of the herb, was the birthplace of its use by man. The first great explorer of the West found the sensuous natives of Hispaniola rolling up and smoking tobacco-leaves with the same persistent indolence that we recognize in the Cuban of the present day. Rough Cortes saw with surprise the luxurious Aztec composing himself for the siesta in the middle of the day as invariably as his fellow Dons in Castile. But he was amazed that the barbarians had discovered in tobacco a sedative to promote their reveries and compose them to sleep, of which the hidalgos were as yet ignorant, but which they were soon to appropriate with avidity, and to use with equal zest. Humboldt says that it had been cultivated by the people of Orinoco from time immemorial, and was smoked all over America at the time of the Spanish Conquest,—also that it was first discovered by Europeans in Yucatan, in 1520, and was there called Petum. Tobacco, according to the same authority, was taken from the word tabac, the name of an instrument used in the preparation of the herb.

Though Columbus and his immediate followers doubtless brought home specimens of tobacco among the other spoils of the New World, Jean Nicot, ambassador to Portugal from Francis II., first sent the seeds to France, where they were cultivated and used about the year 1560. In honor of its sponsor, Botany has named the plant Nicotiana tabacum, and Chemistry distinguished as Nicotin its active alkaloid. Sir Francis Drake first brought tobacco to England about 1586. It owed the greater part of its early popularity, however, to the praise and practice of Raleigh: his high standing and character would have sufficed to introduce still more novel customs. The weed once inhaled, the habit once acquired, its seductions would not allow it to be easily laid aside; and we accordingly find that royal satire, public odium, and ruinous cost were alike inadequate to restrain its rapidly increasing consumption. Somewhere about the year 1600 or 1601 tobacco was carried to the East, and introduced among the Turks and Persians,—it is not known by whom: the devotion of modern Mussulmans might reasonably ascribe it to Allah himself. It seems almost incredible that the Oriental type of life and character could have existed without tobacco. The pipe seems as inseparable as the Koran from the follower of Mahomet.

Barely three centuries ago, then, the first seeds of the Nicotiana tabacum germinated in European soil: now, who shall count the harvests? Less than three centuries ago, Raleigh attracted a crowd by sitting smoking at his door: now, the humblest bog-trotter of Ireland must be poor indeed who cannot own or borrow a pipe. A little more than a century and a half ago, the import into Great Britain was only one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and part of that was reexported: now, the imports reach thirty million pounds, and furnish to government a revenue of twenty millions of dollars,—being an annual tax of three shillings four pence on every soul in the United Kingdom. Nor is the case of England an exceptional one. The tobacco-zone girdles the globe. From the equator, through fifty degrees of latitude, it grows and is consumed on every continent. On every sea it is carried and used by the mariners of every nation. Its incense rises in every clime, as from one vast altar dedicated to its worship,—before which ancient holocausts, the smoke of burnt-offerings in the old Jewish rites, the censers of the Church, and the joss-sticks of the East, must "pale their ineffectual fires." All classes, all ages, in all climates, and in some countries both sexes, use tobacco to dispel heat, to resist cold, to soothe to reverie, or to arouse the brain, according to their national habitations, peculiarities, or habits.

This is not the language of hyperbole. With a partial exception in favor of the hop, tobacco is the sole recognized narcotic of civilization. Opium and hemp, if indulged in, are concealed, by the Western nations: public opinion, public morality, are at war with them. Not so with tobacco, which the majority of civilized men use, and the minority rather deprecate than denounce. We shall avail ourselves of some statistics and computations, which we find ready-calculated, at various sources, to support these assertions. The following are the amounts of tobacco consumed per head in various countries:—

"In Great Britain, 17 ounces per head; in France, 18 1/2 ounces,—three-eighths of this quantity being used in the form of snuff; in Denmark, 70 ounces (4 1/2 lbs.) per head; and in Belgium, 73 1/2 ounces per head;—in New South Wales, where there are no duties, by official returns, 14 pounds per head." We doubt if these quantities much exceed the European average, particularly of Germany and Turkey in Europe. "In some of the States of North America the proportion is much larger, while among Eastern nations, where there are no duties, it is believed to be greater still."

The average for the whole human race of one thousand millions has been reasonably set at seventy ounces per head; which gives a total produce and consumption of tobacco of two millions of tons, or 4,480,000,000 of pounds! "At eight hundred pounds an acre, this would require five and a half million acres of rich land to be kept constantly under tobacco-cultivation."

"The whole amount of wheat consumed by the inhabitants of Great Britain weighs only four and one-third million tons." The reader can draw his own inferences.

The United States are among the largest producers of tobacco, furnishing one-twentieth of the estimated production of the whole world. According to the last census, we raised in 1850 about two hundred million pounds. All the States, with five exceptions,—and two of these are Utah and Minnesota,—shared, in various degrees, in the growth of this great staple. Confining our attention to those which raised a million of pounds and upwards, we find Connecticut and Indiana cited at one million each; Ohio and North Carolina, at ten to twelve millions; Missouri, Tennessee, and Maryland, from seventeen to twenty-one millions; Kentucky and Virginia, about fifty-six million pounds.

Of this gross two hundred million pounds, we export one hundred and twenty-two millions, leaving about seventy-eight millions for home consumption.

Not satisfied with the quality of this modest amount, we import also, from Cuba, Turkey, Germany, etc., about four million pounds, in Havana and Manila cigars and Turkish and German manufactured smoking-tobacco. Thus we increase the total of our consumption to eighty-two million pounds, which gives about three pounds eight ounces to every inhabitant of the United States, against seventeen ounces in England, and eighteen ounces in France. From 1840 to 1850, the consumption in the United States, per head, increased from two pounds and half an ounce to three pounds eight ounces. Here, we buy our tobacco at a fair profit to the producer. In most of the countries of Europe it is either subject to a high tax, or made a government monopoly, both as regards its cultivation, and its manufacture and sale. France consumes about forty-one million pounds, and the imperial exchequer is thereby enriched eighty-six million francs per annum. Not only is the poor man thus obliged to pay an excessive price, but the tobacco furnished him is of a much inferior quality to ours. "Petit-caporal" smoking-tobacco, the delight of the middling classes of Paris, hardly suits an American's taste. In Italy more than one pubblicano has enriched himself and bought nobility by farming the public revenues from tobacco and salt. In Austria the cigars are detestable, though Hungary grows good tobacco, and its Turkish border furnishes some of the meerschaum clay. German smoking-tobaccoes are favorites with students here, but owe their excellence to their mode of manufacture.

Tobacco, according to some authorities, holds the next place to salt, as the article most universally and largely used by man,—we mean, of course, apart from cereals and meats. It is unquestionably the widest-used narcotic. Opium takes the second rank, and hemp the third; but the opium—and hashish-eaters usually add the free smoking of tobacco to their other indulgences.

From these great columns of consumption we may logically deduce two prime points for our argument.

1st. That an article so widely used must possess some peculiar quality producing a desirable effect.

2d. That an article so widely used cannot produce any marked deleterious effect.

For it must meet some instinctive craving of the human being,—as bread and salt meet his absolute needs,—to be so widely sought after and consumed. Fashion does not rule this habit, but it is equally grateful to the savage and the sage. And it cannot be so ruinous to body and mind as some reformers assert; otherwise, in the natural progress of causes and effects, whole nations must have already been extinguished under its use. Many mighty nations have used it for centuries, and show no aggregated deterioration from its employment. Individual exceptions exist in every community. They arise either from idiosyncrasy or from excess, and they have no weight in the argument.

Now, what are these qualities and these effects? We can best answer the first part of the question by a quotation.

"In ministering fully to his natural wants and cravings, man passes through three successive stages.

"First, the necessities of his material nature are provided for. Beef and bread represent the means by which, in every country, this end is attained. And among the numerous forms of animal and vegetable food a wonderful similarity of chemical composition prevails.

"Second, he seeks to assuage the cares of his mind, and to banish uneasy reflections. Fermented liquors are the agents by which this is effected." [They are variously produced by every people, and the active principle is in all the same, namely, Alcohol.]

"Third, he desires to multiply his enjoyments, intellectual and animal, and for the time to exalt them. This he attains by the aid of narcotics. And of these narcotics, again, it is remarkable that almost every country or tribe has its own, either aboriginal or imported; so that the universal instinct of the race has led, somehow or other, to the universal supply of this want or craving also."

These narcotics are Opium, Hemp, the Betel, Coca, Thorn-Apple, Siberian Fungus, Hops, Lettuce, Tobacco. The active principles vary in each, thus differing from foods and stimulants. Our business is now to inquire into the chemical constituents of tobacco.

The leaves of this plant owe their properties to certain invariable active principles, which chemistry has enabled us to separate from those ingredients which are either inert or common to it and other forms of vegetation. They are two in number,—a volatile alkali, and a volatile oil, called nicotin and nicotianin, respectively. A third powerful constituent is developed by combustion, which is named the empyreumatic oil.

Starch, gum, albumen, resin, lignin, extractive, and organic acids exist in tobacco, as they do, in varying proportions, in other plants. But the herb under consideration contains a relatively larger proportion of inorganic salts, as those of lime, potassa, and ammonia,—and especially of highly nitrogenized substances; which explains why tobacco is so exhausting a crop to the soil, and why ashes are among its best fertilizers.

The organic base, nicotin, (or nicotia, as some chemists prefer to call it,) exists in tobacco combined with an acid in excess, and in this state is not volatile. As obtained by distillation with caustic soda, and afterwards treated with sulphuric acid, etc., it is a colorless fluid, volatilizable, inflammable, of little smell when cold, but of an exceedingly acrid, burning taste, and alkaline. Nicotia contains a much larger proportion of nitrogen than most of the other organic alkalies. In its action on the animal system it is one of the most virulent poisons known. It exists in varying, though small proportion, in all species of tobacco. Those called mild, and most esteemed, seem to contain the least. Thus, according to Orfila, Havana tobacco yields two per cent of the alkaloid, and Virginia nearly seven per cent. In the rankest varieties it rarely exceeds eight parts to the hundred. The same toxicologist says that it has the remarkable property of resisting decomposition in the decaying tissues of the body, and he detected it in the bodies of animals destroyed by it, several months after their death. In this particular it resembles arsenic.

Nicotianin, or the volatile oil, is probably the odorous principle of tobacco. According to some, it does not exist in the fresh leaves, but is generated in the drying process. When obtained by distillation, a pound of leaves will yield only two grains; it is therefore in a much smaller proportion than the alkaloid, forming only one half of one per cent. It is a fatty substance, having the odor of tobacco-smoke, and a bitter taste. Applied to the nose, it occasions sneezing, and taken internally, giddiness and nausea. It is therefore one of the active constituents of tobacco, though to a much less degree than nicotin itself. For while Hermstadt swallowed a grain of nicotianin with impunity, the vapor of pure nicotin is so irritating that it is difficult to breathe in a room in which a single drop has been evaporated.

When distilled in a retort, at a temperature above that of boiling water, or burned, as we burn it in a pipe, tobacco affords its third poison, the empyreumatic oil. This is acrid, of a dark brown color, and having a smell as of an old pipe, in the pores of which, particularly of meerschaum clay, it may be found. It is also narcotic and very poisonous, one drop killing reptiles, as if by an electric shock: in this mode of action it is like prussic acid. But this empyreumatic oil consists of two substances; for, if it be washed with acetic acid, it loses its poisonous quality. It contains, therefore, a harmless oil, and a poisonous alkaline substance, which the acetic acid combines with and removes. It has been shown to contain the alkaloid nicotia, and this is probably its only active component.

Assuming, therefore, that nicotianin, from its feebler action and small amount, is not a very efficient principle in producing the narcotic effects of tobacco, and that the empyreumatic oil consists only of fatty matters holding the alkali in solution, we are forced to believe that the only constituent worthy of much attention, as the very soul and essence of the plant, is the organic base, nicotin, or nicotia.

It is probable that the tobacco-chewer, by putting fifty grains of the "Solace," "Honey-Dew," or "Cavendish" into his mouth for the purpose of mastication, introduces at the same time from one to four grains of nicotin with it, according to the quality of the tobacco he uses. It is not probable that anything like this amount is absorbed into the system. Nature protects itself by salivation. It is possible, that, in smoking one hundred grains of tobacco, there may be drawn into the mouth two grains or more of the same poison; "for, as nicotin volatilizes at a temperature below that of burning tobacco, it is constantly present in the smoke." It is not probable that here, again, so much is absorbed.

But we will return to this question of the relative effects of chewing, cigar- and pipe-smoking, and snuff-taking, presently. For we suppose that the anxious mother, if she has followed us so far, is by this time in considerable alarm at this wholesale poisoning.

Poisons are to be judged by their effects; for this is the only means we have of knowing them to be such. And if a poison is in common use, we must embrace all the results of such use in a perfect generalization before we can decide impartially. We do not hesitate to eat peaches, though we know they owe much of their peculiar flavor to prussic acid. It is but fair to apply an equally large generalization to tobacco. Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements of the peach and the bitter almond into a transparent fluid, of which the smell shall be vertiginous and the taste death. But chemistry is often misunderstood, in two ways: in the one case, by the incredulity of total ignorance; in the other, by the overcredulity of imperfect knowledge. That poor woman who murdered her husband by arsenic not long since was an instance of the first. She laughed to scorn the idea that the chemists could discover anything in the ejected contents of the stomach of her victim, which she voluntarily left in their way. She could not conceive that the scattered crystals of the fatal powder might be gathered into a metallic mirror, the first glance at which would reflect her guilt.

They who gape, horror-struck, at the endless revelations of chemistry, without giving reason time to act, err in the second manner. Led away by the brilliant hues and wonderful transformations of the laboratory, they forget the size of the world outside, in which these changes are enacted, and the quiet way in which Nature works. The breath of chlorine is deadly, but we daily eat it in safety, wrapped in its poison-proof envelope of sodium, as common salt. Carbonic acid is among the gases most hostile to man, but he drinks it in soda-water or Champagne with impunity. So we cannot explain how a poison will act, if introduced into the body in the diluted form in which Nature offers it, and there subjected to the complicated chemico-vital processes which constitute life.

In the alembic of the chemist we may learn analysis, and from it infer, but not imitate, save in a few instances, the synthesis of Nature. Changes in the arrangement of atoms, without one particle altered that we can discover, may make all the difference between starch and sugar. By an obscure change, which we call fermentation, these may become alcohol, the great stimulant of the world. By subtracting one atom of water from its elements we change this to ether, the new-found lethe of pain. As from the inexhaustible bottle of the magician, the chemist can furnish us from the same two elements air or aquafortis. We may be pardoned these familiar examples to prove that we must not judge of things by their palpable qualities, when concentrated or in the gross. That fiery demon, nitric acid, is hid, harmless in its imperceptible subdivision, in the dew on every flower.

From all this we conclude that the evil effects of tobacco are to be determined by their proved physiological effects; and also that we must aid our decision by a survey of its general asserted effects. In treating of these effects, we shall speak, first, of what is known; second, of what its opponents assert; and, third, of what we claim as the results of its use.

What is absolutely known is very little. We see occasional instances of declining health; we learn that the sufferers smoke or chew, and we are very apt to ascribe all their maladies to tobacco. So far as we are aware, the most notorious organic lesion which has been supposed due to this practice is a peculiar form of cancer of the lip, where the pipe, and particularly the clay pipe, has pressed upon the part. But more ample statistics have disproved this theory.

We have as yet become acquainted with no satisfactory series of experiments upon tobacco analogous to those which have been made of some articles of food.

The opponents of tobacco, upon whom we consider the burden of proof to rest, in the absence of any marked ill effects palpable in so large a consumption of the herb, are thus reduced to generalities.

Tobacco is said to produce derangement of the digestion, and of the regular, steady action of the nervous system. These effects must be in a measure connected; but one distinct effect of tobacco is claimed, upon the secretions of the mouth, with which it comes into direct contact. It is said to cause a waste and a deterioration of the saliva. Let us examine this first.

The waste of saliva in young smokers and in immoderate chewers we admit. The amount secreted by a healthy man has been variously estimated at from one and a half to three pounds per diem. And it certainly seems as if the whole of this was to be found upon the vile floors of cars, hotels, and steamboats. The quantity secreted varies much with circumstances; but experiments prove the quality to be not affected by the amount.

To show how the deterioration of this fluid may affect digestion, we must inquire into its normal physiological constitution and uses. Its uses are of two kinds: to moisten the food, and to convert starch into sugar. The larger glands fulfil the former; the smaller, mostly, the latter office. Almost any substance held in the mouth provokes the flow of saliva by mechanical irritation. Mental causes influence it; for the thought of food will "make the mouth water," as well as its presence within the lips. No one who has tried to eat unmoistened food, when thirsty, will dispute its uses as a solvent. Tobacco seems to be a direct stimulant to the salivary apparatus. Habit blunts this effect only to a limited extent. The old smoker has usually some increase of this secretion, although he does not expectorate. But if he does not waste this product, he swallows it, it is said, in a state unfit to promote digestion. The saliva owes its peculiarity to one of its components, called ptyalin. And this element possesses the remarkable power of converting starch into sugar, which is the first step in its digestion. Though many azotized substances in a state of decomposition exert a similar agency, yet it is possessed by ptyalin in a much greater degree. The gastric juice has probably no action on farinaceous substances. And it has been proved by experiments, that food moistened with water digests more slowly than when mixed with the saliva.

More than this, the conversion of starch into sugar has been shown to be positively retarded in the stomach by the acidity of the gastric secretions. Only after the azotized food has been somewhat disintegrated by the action of the gastric juice, and the fluids again rendered alkaline by the presence of saliva, swallowed in small quantities for a considerable time after eating, does the saccharifying process go on with normal rapidity and vigor.

Now starch is the great element, in all farinaceous articles, which is adapted to supply us with calorifacient food. "In its original condition, either raw or when broken up by boiling, it does not appear that starch is capable of being absorbed by the alimentary canal. By its conversion into sugar it can alone become a useful aliment." This is effected almost instantaneously by the saliva in the mouth, and at a slower rate in the stomach.

Obviously, then, if the use of tobacco interferes with the normal action of the saliva, and if the digestion of starch ends in the stomach, here is the strong point in the argument of the opponents of tobacco. We should wonder at the discrepancy between physiology and facts, theory and the evidence of our senses and daily experience among the world of smokers, and be ready to renounce either science or "the weed." Fortunately for our peace of mind and for our respect for physiology, the first point of the proposition is not satisfactorily proved, and the second is untrue. We are not certain that nicotin ruins ptyalin; we are certain that the functions of other organs are vicarious of those of the salivary glands.

We say that it is not satisfactorily proved that tobacco impairs the sugar-making function of the saliva. At least, we have never seen the proof from recorded experiments. Such may exist, but we have met only with loose assertions to this effect, of a similar nature to those hygienic dicta which we find bandied about in the would-be-physiological popular journals, which are so plentiful in this country, and which may be styled the "yellow-cover" literature of science.

We acknowledge this to be the weak point in our armor, and are open to further light. Yet more, for the sake of hypothesis, we will assume it proved. What follows? Are we to get no more sugar while we smoke? By no means. Hard by the stomach lies the pancreas, an organ so similar in structure to the salivary glands, that even so minute an observer as Koelliker does not think it requisite to give it a separate description. Its secretion, which is poured into the second stomach, contains a ferment analogous to that of the saliva, and amounts probably to about seven ounces a day. The food, on leaving the stomach, is next subjected to its influence, together with that of the bile. It helps digest fatty matters by its emulsive powers; it has been more recently supposed to form a sort of peptone with nitrogenized articles also; but, what is more to our purpose, it turns starch into sugar even more quickly than the saliva itself. And even if the reformers were to beat us from this stronghold, by proving that tobacco impaired the saccharifying power of this organ also, we should still find the mixed fluids supplied by the smaller, but very numerous glands of the intestines, sufficient to accomplish the requisite modification of starch, though more slowly and to a less degree.

We come now to the second count in the indictment,—that tobacco injuriously affects the nervous system, and through it the digestion. The accusation is here more vague and indefinite, and the answer also is less susceptible of proof. Both sides must avail themselves of circumstantial, rather than direct evidence.

That digestion is in direct dependence upon the nervous system, and that even transitory or emotional states of the latter affect the former, there can be no doubt. It is so familiar a fact, that instances need hardly be cited to prove it. Hence we are told, that tobacco, by deranging the one, disorders the other,—that nervousness, or morbid irritability of the nerves, palpitations and tremulousness, are soon followed by emaciation and dyspepsia, or more or less inability to digest.

We conceive Prout, an eminent authority, to be near the truth, when he says of tobacco, "The strong and healthy suffer comparatively little, while the weak and predisposed to disease fall victims to its poisonous operation." The hod-carrier traversing the walls of lofty buildings, and the sailor swinging on the yard-arm, are not subject to nervousness, though they smoke and chew; nor are they prone to dyspepsia, unless from excesses of another kind.

It has not been shown that tobacco either hastens or delays the metamorphosis of tissue,—that it drains the system by waste, or clogs it by retarding the natural excretions. We must turn, then, to its direct influence upon the nervous system to convince ourselves of its ill effects, if such exist.

Nor has it been proved that the nervous influence is affected in such a way as directly to impair the innervation of the organic functions, which derive their chief impulse to action from the scattered ganglia of the sympathetic system. Opium, the most powerful narcotic, benumbs the brain into sleep; produces a corresponding reaction, on awakening; shuts up the secretions, except that of the skin, and thus deranges the alimentary functions. The decriers of tobacco will, we conceive, be unable to show that it produces such effects.

The reformers are reduced, then, to the vague generality, that smoking and chewing "affect the nerves."

Students, men of sedentary, professional habits, persons of a very nervous temperament, or those subject to much excitement in business and politics, sometimes show debility and languor, or agitation and nervousness, while they smoke and chew. Are there no other causes at work, sufficient in themselves to produce these effects? Are want of exercise, want of air, want of rest, and want of inherited vigor to be eliminated from the estimate, while tobacco is made the scape-goat of all their troubles?

Climate, and the various influences affecting any race which has migrated after a stationary residence of generations to a new country extending under different parallels of latitude, have been reasonably accused of rendering us a nervous people. It is not so reasonable to charge one habit with being the sole cause of this, although we should be more prudent in not following it to excess. The larger consumption of tobacco here is due both to the cheapness of the product and to the wealth of the consumer. But it does not follow that we are more subjected to its narcotic influences because we use the best varieties of the weed. On the contrary, the poor and rank tobaccoes, grown under a northern sky, are the richest in nicotin.

But it will be better to continue the argument about its effects upon the nervous system in connection with the assertions of the reformers. The following is a list, by no means complete, of these asserted ill effects from its use.

Tobacco is said to cause softening of the brain,—dimness of vision,—("the Germans smoke; the Germans are a spectacled nation!" post hoc, ergo propter hoc? the laborious intellectual habits of this people, and their trying "text," are considered of no account,)—cancer of the stomach,—disease of the liver,—dyspepsia,—enfeebled nutrition, and consequent emaciation,—dryness of the mouth,—"the clergyman's sore-throat" and loss of voice,—irritability of the nervous system,—tremulousness,—palpitation and paralysis,—and, among the moral ills, loss of energy, idleness, drunkenness. A fearful catalogue, which would dedicate the tabatiere to Pandora, were it true.

Hygienic reformers are usually unequalled in imaginary horrors, except by the charlatans who vend panaceas.

We have no reasons for believing that tobacco causes softening of the brain equal in plausibility to those which ascribe it to prolonged and excessive mental effort. The statistics of disease prove cancers of other organs to be twice as frequent, among females, as cancer of the stomach is among males; and an eminent etiologist places narcotics among the least proved causes of this disease. A hot climate, abuse of alcohol, a sedentary life, and sluggish digestion happen, rather curiously, to be very frequent concomitants, if not causes, of disease of the liver. Dyspepsia haunts both sexes, and, we venture to assert, though we cannot bring figures to prove it, is as frequent among those who do not use tobacco as among those who do. We are ready to concede that excessive chewing and smoking, particularly if accompanied by large expectoration, may impair nutrition and cause emaciation: that the mass of mankind eat and digest and live, as well as use "the weed," is proof that its moderate employment is not ordinarily followed by this result. Dryness of the mouth follows expectoration as a matter of course; but the salivation excited in an old smoker by tobacco is very moderate, and not succeeded by thirst, unless the smoke be inhaled too rapidly and at too high a temperature.

We come next to a very tender point with reformers, the laryngeal cough and failing voice of the reverend clergy. The later generations of ministers of this vicinity, as a body, have abandoned tobacco, and yet the evil has not diminished. An eminent divine of our acquaintance, who does not smoke daily, always finds a cigar relieve a trifling bronchitis, to which he is occasionally subject The curious will find in the "Medical Journal" of this city, for 1839, that quite as much can be said on one side as on the other of this subject.

The minor, rarely the graver affections of the nervous system, do follow the use of tobacco in excess. We admit this willingly; but we deny these effects to its moderate use by persons of ordinary health and of no peculiar idiosyncrasy. Numerous cases of paralysis among tobacco-takers in France were traced to the lead in which the preparation was enveloped.

We pass next to what we claim as the effects of moderate tobacco-using, and will take first the evidence of the toxicologists. Both Pereira and Christison agree that "no well-ascertained ill effects have been shown to result from the habitual practice of smoking." Beck, a modern authority, says, "Common observation settles the question, that the moderate and daily use of tobacco does not prove injurious. This is a general rule": and he adds, that exceptions necessarily exist, etc.

The repugnance and nausea which greet the smoker, in his first attempts to use tobacco, are not a stronger argument against it than the fact that the system so soon becomes habituated to these effects is a proof of its essential innocuousness.

Certainly the love of tobacco is not an instinctive appetite, like that for nitrogen and carbon in the form of food. Man was not born with a cigar in his mouth, and it is not certain that the Nicotiana tabacum flourished in the Garden of Eden. But history proves the existence of an instinct among all races—call it depraved, if you will, the fact remains—leading them to employ narcotics. And narcotics all nations have sought and found. We venture to affirm that tobacco is harmless as any. The betel and the hop can alone compare with it in this respect; and the hop is not a narcotic which satisfies alone; others are used with it. Opium and Indian hemp are not to be mentioned in comparison; while coca, in excess, is much more hurtful.

Tobacco may more properly be called a sedative than a narcotic. Opium, the type of the latter class, is in its primary action excitant, but secondarily narcotic. The opium-eaters are familiar with this, and learn by experience to regulate the dose so as to prolong the first and shorten the second effects, as much as possible.

Tobacco, on the other hand, is primarily sedative and relaxing. A high authority says of its physiological action:—

"First, That its greater and first effect is to assuage and allay and soothe the system in general.

"Second, That its lesser and second, or after effect, is to excite and invigorate, and at the same time give steadiness and fixity to the powers of thought."

Either of these effects will predominate, we conceive, according to the intellectual state and capacity of the individual, as well as in accordance with the amount used.

The dreamy Oriental is sunk into deeper reverie under the influence of tobacco, and his happiness while smoking seems to consist in thinking of nothing. The studious German, on the contrary, "thinks and dreams, and dreams and thinks, alternately; but while his body is soothed and stilled, his mind is ever awake."

This latter description resembles, to compare small things with great, the effects of opium, as detailed by De Quincey.

"In habitual smokers," says Pereira, "the practice, when moderately indulged, produces that remarkably soothing and tranquillizing effect on the mind which has caused it to be so much admired and adopted by all classes of society."

The pleasure derived from tobacco is very hard to define, since it is negative rather than positive, and to be estimated more by what it prevents than by what it produces. It relieves the little vexations and cares of life, soothes the harassed mind, and promotes quiet reflection. This it does most of all when used sparingly and after labor. But if incessantly consumed, it keeps up a constant, but mild cerebral exhilaration. The mind acts more promptly and more continuously under its use. We think any tobacco-consumer will bear us out in this definition of its varying effects.

After a full meal, if it does not help, it at least hides digestion. "It settles one's dinner," as the saying is, and gives that feeling of quiet, luxurious bien-aise which would probably exist naturally in a state of primeval health. It promotes, with most persons, the peristaltic movements of the alimentary passages by its relaxing properties.

Smoking is eminently social, and favors domestic habits. And in this way, we contend, it prevents drinking, rather than leads to it. Many still associate the cigar with the bar-room. This notion should have become obsolete ere this, for it has an extremely limited foundation in fact. Bachelors and would-be-manly boys are not the only consumers of tobacco, though they are the best patrons of the bar. The poor man's pipe retains him by his own fireside, as well as softens his domestic asperities.

Excess in tobacco, like excess in any other material good meant for moderate use, is followed by evil effects, more or less quickly, according to the constitution and temperament of the abuser. The lymphatic and obese can smoke more than the sanguine and nervous, with impunity. How much constitutes excess varies with each individual. Manufacturers of tobacco do not appear to suffer. Christison states, as the result of the researches of MM. Parent-Duchatelet and D'Arcet among four thousand workmen in the tobacco-manufactories of France, that they found no evidence of its being unwholesome. Moderate tobacco-users attain longevity equal to that of any other class in the community.

We will cite only the following brief statistics from an old physician of a neighboring town. In looking over the list of the oldest men, dead or alive, within his circle of acquaintance, he finds a total of 67 men, from 73 to 93 years of age. Their average age is 78 and a fraction. Of these 67, 54 were smokers or chewers; 9 only, non-consumers of tobacco; and 4 were doubtful, or not ascertained. About nine-elevenths smoked or chewed. The compiler quaintly adds, "How much longer these men might have lived without tobacco, it is impossible to determine."

The tobacco-leaf is consumed by man usually in three ways: by smoking, snuffing, or chewing. The first is the most common; the last is the most disagreeable.

Tobacco is smoked in the East Indies, China, and Siam; in Turkey and Persia; over Europe generally; and in North and South America. Cigars are preferred in the East and West Indies, Spain, England, and America. China, Turkey, Persia, and Germany worship the pipe. In Europe the pipe is patronized on account of its cheapness. Turks and Persians use the mildest forms of pipe-smoking, choosing pipes with long, flexible stems, and having the smoke cooled and purified by passing through water. The Germans prefer the porous meerschaum,—the Canadians, the common clay. Women smoke habitually in China, the East and West Indies, and to a less extent in South America, Spain, and France.

We have no fears that any reasoning of ours would induce the other sex to use tobacco. The ladies set too just a value on the precious commodity of their charms for that. There is little danger that they would do anything which might render them disagreeable. The practice of snuff-taking is about the only form they patronize, and that to a slight extent.

France is the home of snuff. A large proportion of all the tobacco consumed there is used in this form. The practice prevails to a large extent also in Iceland and Scotland. The Icelander uses a small horn, like a powder-horn, to hold his snuff. Inserting the smaller end into the nostril, he elevates the other, and thus conveys the pungent powder directly to the part. The more delicate Highlander carries the snuff to his nose on a little shovel. This can be surpassed only by the habit of "dipping," peculiar to some women of the United States, and whose details will not bear description.

Chewing prevails par excellence in our own country, and among the sailors of most nations,—to some extent also in Switzerland, Iceland, and among the Northern races. It is the safest and most convenient form at sea.

By smoking, each of the three active ingredients of tobacco is rendered capable of absorption. The empyreumatic oil is produced by combustion. The pipe retains this and a portion of the nicotin in its pores. The cigar, alone, conveys all the essential elements into the system.

Liebig once asserted that cigar-smoking was prejudicial from the amount of gaseous carbon inhaled. We cannot believe this. The heat of cigar-smoke may have some influence on the teeth; and, on the whole, the long pipe, with a porous bowl, is probably the best way of using tobacco in a state of ignition.

By repeated fermentations in preparing snuff, much of the nicotin is evaporated and lost. Yet snuff-takers impair the sense of smell, and ruin the voice, by clogging up the passages with the finer particles of the powder. The functions of the labyrinthine caverns of the nose and forehead, and of the delicate osseous laminae which constitute the sounding-boards of vocalization, are thus destroyed.

Chewing is the most constant, as it is the nastiest habit. The old chewer, safe in the blunted irritability of the salivary glands, can continue his practice all night, if he be so infatuated, without inconvenience. In masticating tobacco, nicotin and nicotianin are rolled about in the mouth with the quid, but are not probably so quickly absorbed as when in the gaseous state. Yet chewers are the greatest spitters, and have a characteristic drooping of the angle of the lower lip, which points to loss of power in the leavator muscles.

Latakia, Shiraz, Manila, Cuba, Virginia, and Maryland produce the most valuable tobaccoes. Though peculiar soils and dressings may impart a greater aroma and richness to the plant, by the variations in the quantity of nicotianin, as compared with the other organic elements, yet we are inclined to think that the diminished proportion of nicotin in the best varieties in the cause of their superior flavor to the rank Northern tobaccoes, and that it is mainly because they are milder that they are most esteemed. So, too, the cigar improves with age, because a certain amount of nicotin evaporates and escapes. Taste in cigars varies, however, from the Austrian government article, a very rank "long-nine," with a straw running through the centre to improve its suction, to the Cuban cigarrito, whose ethereal proportions three whiffs will exhaust.