278 AMERICAN SMOKERS. 



twentieth of the whole Tobacco produce of the world, and does 

 honor to her native weed by being its mightiest consumer, 

 why, in the name of all disasters, the product is so dear ay, 

 doubly dear ? And thus as his pipe burns low, a hundred 

 other statistics ; then, knocking out his whitened ashes on 

 the floor, he reads sedately (his pipe being out) that the " To- 

 bacco plant furnishes ashes to the amount of one-fourth of 

 its bulk, being a much greater proportion than that of any 

 other vegetable product," and, moreover, that " Tobacco ex- 

 hausts the soil at the ratio of fourteen tons of wheat to one 

 of Tobacco !" Oh, base insinuation ! But, as he relights his 

 pipe, and the graceful vapor circles in fresh buoyancy and 

 grace before him, he only, in his contented mind, retains that 

 one supreme expression " One ton of Tobacco /" Ah, 



" Think of it, picture it 

 Now, if you can I" 



From " A Paper of Tobacco," *we extract the following 

 humorous description of Yankee cigar smokers, which to a 

 certain extent is true to life, but like most of the articles 

 descriptive of American life by English Authors, who travel 

 in America and write a look afterwards, it is exaggerated or 

 overdrawn : 



" The Americans, who pride themselves on being the fast- 

 est-going people on the ' versal globe ' who build steamers 

 that can out-paddle the sea-serpent and breed horses that can 

 trot faster than an ostrich can run are, undoubtedly, enti- 

 tled to take precedence of all nations as consumers of the 

 weed. The sedentary Turk, who smokes from morn to night, 

 does not, on an average, get through so much tobacco per 

 annum, as a right slick, active, go-ahead Yankee, who thinks 

 nothing, i upon his own relation,* of felling a wagon-load of 

 timber before breakfast, or of cutting down a couple of acres 

 corn before dinner. The Americans, it is to be observed, gen- 

 erally smoke cigars ; and tobacco in this form burns very fast 

 away in the open air, more especially when the consumer ia 

 rapidly locomotive, whether upon his own legs, the back of 

 a horse, the top of a ooach, the deck of a steamboat, or in an 

 open railway carriage. The habit of chewing tobacco is also 



London, 1839 



