TEA AND TOBACCO. 



people talk, that smoking was the only selfish indulgence in 

 the world. When people argue in this strain, I immediately 

 assume the offensive. I roll back the tide of war right inta 

 the enemy's intrenched camp of comfortable customs; I 

 attack the expensive and unnecessary indulgences of ladies 

 and gentlemen who do not smoke. I take cigar-smoking aa 

 an expense of, say, half-a-crown a-day, and pipe-smoking at 

 threepence. 



" I then compare the cost of these indulgences with the 

 cost of other indulgences not a whit more necessary, which 

 no one ever questions a man's right to if he can pay for 

 them. There is luxurious eating, for instance. A woman 

 who has got the habit of delicate eating will easily consume 

 dainties to the amount of half-a-crown a-day, which cannot 

 possibly do her any good beyond the mere gratification of 

 the palate. And there is the luxury of carriage-keeping, in 

 many instances very detrimental to the health of women, by 

 entirely depriving them of the use of their legs. Now, you 

 cannot keep a carriage a-going quite as cheaply as a pipe- 

 Many a fine meerschaum keeps up its cheerful fire on a 

 shilling a-week. I am not advocating a sumptuary law to- 

 put down carriages and cookery ; I desire only to say that 

 people who indulge in these expensive and wholly superflu- 

 ous luxuries, have no right to be so hard on smokers for 

 their indulgence. 



" Nearly every gentleman who drinks good wine at all will 

 drink the value of half-a-crown a-day. The ladies do not 

 blame him for this. Half-a-dozen glasses of good wine are 

 not thought an extravagance in any man of fair means, but 

 women exclaim when a man spends the same amount in 

 Bracking cigars. The French habit of coffee-drinking and 

 the English habit of tea-drinking are also cases in point. 

 They are quite as expensive as ordinary Tobacco-smoking, 

 and, like it, defensible only on the ground of the pleasurable 

 Bensation they communicate to the nervous system. But 

 these habits are so universal that no one thinks of attacking 

 them, unless now and then some persecuted smoker in self- 

 defence. 



u Tea and tobacco are alike seductive, delicious, and dele- 

 terious. The two indulgences will, perhaps, become equally 

 necessary to the English world. It is high treason to the 

 English national feeling to say a word against tea, which is- 

 now so universally recognized as a national beverage that 

 people forget it comes from China, and that it is both alien 



