SYMPOSIUM 19 



' And when your physician wisely admonished you, and 

 would have stopped further indulgence in the weed, at least 

 for a time, confess, naughty man, what was your reply ? ' 



' May my last breath be drawn through a pipe and 

 exhaled in a pun ! And yet I would readily admit that, 



For thy sake, tobacco, I 

 Would do anything but die ! ' 



The eloquent Robert Hall, England's greatest pulpit 

 orator, takes up the social theme and recounts his first 

 experience of the pipe. ' My association with the fraternity 

 of smokers happened when I was a young man at Cam- 

 bridge under the guidance and somewhat severe admonition 

 of the learned Dr. Parr, whose pre-eminence among smokers 

 we all acknowledged. Thus early in life brought under the 

 soothing influence of the weed by so profound a scholar, 

 whose knowledge of Greek was the terror and admiration of 

 young men, and feeling the natural desire of youth to 

 imitate the great, I thought I could not in any better way 

 fit myself for his society than by adopting his habit of 

 smoking, and out of a long clay pipe like his. It was then 

 I developed a taste for tobacco which from that time 

 onward never left me. Being pressed on one occasion to 

 explain why I began the practice, I made answer that I was 

 qualifying myself for the society of a Doctor of Divinity, and 

 that my pipe was the test of my admission. Indeed, I 

 began to experience an ill-at-ease feeling whenever the weed 

 and its instrument were not within my reach. I did not 

 care to argue with those people who thought evil things of 

 smoking. If they did not like it I would merely advise 

 them to keep from it. For myself, I was perfectly con- 

 tented if they would let me alone, and allow me the mild 

 indulgence during my sojourn among mortals.' 



