TA Y-BUN-ANE-JE-GA Y. 283 



younger ones, will recall their brave attempts to smoke 

 things, no matter how pungent, which did not upset and 

 invert their youthful stomachs. Fifty years ago most 

 boys in America thought it smart to chew tobacco, and 

 they acquired the disgusting habit; but the younger ones 

 would get licorice ball, and spit in imitation of a tobacco 

 chewer, and then some unbeliever would challenge him 

 with, "That ain't tobacco you're a-chewin'; it's on'y lick- 

 orish!" Yes, I was a boy once. 



These Northern Indians must smoke, but tobacco 

 was an exotic which positively declined to grow so far 

 North, and, like the boys, they found a substitute. After 

 they found the Southern weed it was too costly to use 

 alone, and they mixed it with killi-ki-nic merely for 

 economy; but preferred pure tobacco when they could 

 get it. 



"This reminds me." In my young days, when I was 

 particularly fond of negro minstrelsy and burlesquing 

 things, and shortly after the time of which I write, Long- 

 fellow published "Hiawatha," a poem which I never tire 

 of reading, but one whose meter urgently invites bur- 

 lesque; and with hundreds of others I essayed it. Else- 

 where I have said that some people seemed shocked at 

 seeing a thing which they love burlesqued. That means 

 that their sense of humor is only partially developed. 

 Then and to-day I regard "Hiawatha" as the great Amer- 

 ican epic, but I wrote: 



"Should you ask me whence I got them, 



Got these yarns of old James River; 



With their flavor of tobacco, 



Of the stinkweed, the mundungus, 



And the pipe of Old Virginny, 



And the twangle of the banjo; 



Of the banjo, the goatskinnit, 



