284: SCIENCE OF LIGHTING. 



and giving out a dark and offensive cloud, while the other 

 Bide remains untouched by the tire, only to wither and crackle 

 and twist into uncouth shapes, until the smoker flings the 

 cigar away, with an accompaniment of expletives which 

 attach rather to his own stupidity than to the piece of to- 

 bacco he has so abominably abused. You will see another 

 with a good pipe, laden with good tobacco, well lit, blowing 

 incessantly down the mouth-piece and the stem until the 

 moisture introduced with his breath into the bowl of his 

 pipe effectually prevents the tobacco from burning, and puts 

 out the fire ; and then you will hear him lament that he 

 should have paid so good a price for a pipe so bad that it 

 'fouls.' before he has smoked a single hour. You will see 

 another who, while he talks to his friends, allows his tobacco 

 to go out every three or four minutes, so that at length his 

 mouth is sore and his palate nauseated with the combined 

 fumes of lucifer matches, burnt paper and exhausted tobacco 

 dust ; and he inveighs against the c cabbage-leaf which that 

 rascally tobacconist sold him for good Shag or Cavendish.' 

 Another knows so little of the art of smoking that he never 

 * stops' his pipe, and so allows the light dust of the burnt 

 weed to fly about him in flakes and minute particles, to the 

 permanent damage of his own and his neighbors' clothes. 

 But in nothing is the inartistic character of English smoking 

 so conspicuously exemplified as in the use of l lights.' Those 

 who form the great majority of smokers amongst the Eng- 

 lish-speaking races seem to consider that, so long as their 

 pipes are set alight, it matters not how or from what source 

 the light is obtained. Thus, one will place his pipe-bowl in 

 a flame of gas, and pull away at the stem till his tobacco is 

 on fire ; another will thrust the bowl into the midst of a coal 

 fire, and when he sees a glow in the bowl withdraw it, and 

 contentedly puff away ; another stops an obliging policeman 

 or railway guard, and ignites his tobacco by hard pulling at 

 the flame of an oil-lamp ; another will stick the end of a 

 choice cigar into the bowl of a pipe filled with coarsest Shag, 

 thus ruining the flavor of his ' prime Havana ' forever ; while 

 yet another will light lucifer matches, and apply the blazing 

 brimstone to his pipe or cigar, thus saturating the whole 

 mass with sulphurous and phosphoretic fumes, to the ruin of 

 the weed and the injury of his own health. 



" How much wiser the West Indian negro, who takes a 

 burning stick from the wood tire, and tenderly lights his 

 weed therewith, or joyfully brings a handful of the white-hot 



