10 TOBACCO : ITS HISTORY. 



timony, the eagerness with which the herh was 

 adopted on all sides. He asks — 



" Is it rot a great vanity that a man cannot heartily 

 welcome his friend now, but straight they must be in 

 hand with tobacco ? no, it is become in place of a cure 

 [remedy] a point of good fellowship ; and he that will 

 refuse to take a pipe of tobacco amongst his fellowes 

 (though by his own election he would rather feel the 

 savour of a sinke) is accounted peevish, and no good 

 company, even as they do with tippling in the cold eastern 

 countries. Yea, the mistress cannot in a more mamierly 

 kind entertain her servant than by giving him out of her 

 fair hand a pipe of tobacco. 



" Moreover, which is a great iniquity, and against all 

 humanity, the husband shall not be ashamed to reduce 

 thereby his delicate, wholesome, and clean-complexioned 

 wife to that extremity, that either she must also corrupt 

 ber sweet breath therewith, or else resolve to live in a 

 perpetual stinking torment." 



Certainly this description of the prevalence of 

 the custom, if true, proves that the practice was 

 more general at that time — thirty years after its 

 introduction — than it is at the present day, though 

 far more costly, for the king states that " some of 

 the gentry bestow three and some four hundred 

 pounds a yeere upon this precious stinke " — repre- 

 senting a much greater value of the present 

 money. 



