TOBACCO LEAVES 



Carlyle was born in 1795, and died in 

 1881, at the age of eighty-six. For about 

 seventy of those eighty-six years Carlyle 

 smoked, and made most of his contempora- 

 ries smoke. The trouble with him was that 

 he was too fond of smoking a rank pipe 

 on an empty stomach. That gave him 

 stomach pains, and his contemporaries par- 

 ticular pains ; for puir auld Carlyle 

 was as savage as a meat-house dog all 

 the time. He cared for but two men in the 

 world, Tennyson and Dickens. All the 

 rest were puir, feckless, reckless, intem- 

 perate bladders and gas-bags, and all be- 

 cause Tom did not know how to clean his 

 pipe, and keep it clean, and would smoke 

 before breakfast. 



Alfred Tennyson did not know how to 

 smoke, either; for he would smoke a long 

 clay pipe once and then break it. A new 

 pipe is a most unpleasant thing to draw, 

 and sometimes when his pipe was not in 



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