SYMPOSIUM 17 



which clearly indicated that the inflexible one would have 

 kicked the seat from under him, and, taking his stand on 

 the eternal verities, would have lashed with the scorn of 

 his tongue the drowsy dogs into a full recognition of their 

 own worthlessness ; would have compelled them to realise 

 that a deliverer was at hand, and that Carlyle was 

 synonymous with Cromwell. 



Yet he would not overlook tobacco's failings. Tobacco 

 he averred had done to the German populations important 

 multifarious functions, ' For truly in politics, morality and 

 all departments of their practical and speculative affairs its 

 influence, good and bad, could be traced; influences 

 generally bad ; pacificatory but bad, engaging them in idle 

 cloudy dreams — still worse, promoting composure among 

 the palpably chaotic and discomposed — soothing all things 

 into lazy peace that all things might be left to themselves 

 very much and to the laws of gravity and discomposition, 

 whereby German affairs came to be greatly overgrown with 

 funguses and symptoms of dry and wet rot.' Here 

 Germany's great chancellor broke in with hilarity, and said 

 how he was reminded — 



' Hold your tongue, Furst, till I have done.' Relaxing 

 into a more social vein, Carlyle described how he became 

 a smoker from the age of eleven, and how his mother would 

 fill his long clay pipe, light it, take a whiff or two, and then 

 hand it to him. ' And as to snuffing, I will tell you what 

 happened to me when I was a very little boy, perhaps not 

 more than four years old, and before I was admitted to the 

 dignity of trousers. I went to the house of two old ladies 

 who were fond of snuff. Their box to me was something 

 wonderful. Either as a cruel jest, or in utter foolishness, 

 they asked me to take a pinch, I, really, not knowing what 

 snuff was. Urged and instructed by the ladies, I took a 



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