TOBACCO IN RELATION TO HEALTH 53 



humanity, glimpses may be caught of a quiet fellow-being 

 plodding along the highways and byways of the great 

 metropolis, with a bag slung over his shoulder, and his 

 eyes fixed on the gutters intent upon picking up these 

 unconsidered trifles, or wending his way to the side door 

 of some hotel or hall where convivial souls do congregate 

 of an evening, and there doing a little private business with 

 the janitor, who pours into his bag these spoils of the 

 night's revelry. And so it comes about that out of the 

 gutters and waste places of the earth there ultimately return 

 to the manufacturer the sorry remains of the once-treasured 

 Indian weed. Many a young hopeful of slender purse hugs 

 with pride his penny or twopenny cigar clad in a new 

 coat, little dreaming of its having in a former existence 

 shone, glow-worm like, in another sphere. Then there are 

 ' fancy mixtures ' made up for the pipe, enticingly scented 

 with an odour unknown to the weed, and which, as if 

 ashamed of the connection, vanishes in the burning, 

 leaving not a trace behind, save wonder at what can have 

 become of it, for the smoker gets none. And have we not 

 always in view the lowly wayfarer along life's by-paths, 

 whose feet have trodden thorny places and stumbled, 

 maybe ? He sees in the castaway an emblem of himself, 

 and fraternally picks out of the gutter a little consolation 

 for the buffets of the day ; for tobacco has been aptly 

 called the poor man's anodyne. And so life is rounded off 

 with a smoke. Possibly thoughts such as these mingle 

 with the smoker's reflections on the subject of waste to the 

 consideration of which Sir Michael invited their atten- 

 tion. But the economic phase the question presents may 

 be safely left to settle itself ^ for, after all, the cost of 

 the indulgence is the merest trifle compared with the 

 price paid for it in, say, Jacobean time, when paternal 



