148 MY LIFE [Chap. 



to the little village of Llanbister, near the middle of Radnor- 

 shire, the nearest towns being Builth, in Breconshire, and 

 Newtown, in Montgomeryshire, both more than twelve miles 

 distant. This was a very large parish, being fifteen miles 

 long, but I think we could only have corrected the old map 

 or we should have been longer there than we really were. 

 Here, also, we had a young gentleman with us for a month 

 or two to practise surveying. He was, I think, a Welshman, 

 and a pleasant and tolerably respectable young man, but he 

 had one dreadful habit — excessive smoking. I have never 

 met a person so much a slave to the habit, and even if I had 

 had any inclination to try it again after my first failure, his 

 example would have cured me. 



He prided himself on being a kind of champion smoker, 

 and assured us that he had once, for a wager, smoked a good- 

 sized china teapot full of tobacco through the spout. He 

 smoked several pipes of very strong tobacco during the day, 

 beginning directly after breakfast, and any idle moments 

 were occupied by smoking. The village being an excessively 

 small one, and the population of the parish very scattered, 

 there was only one public-house, where we were living, and 

 the landlady went every week to market to lay in a stock of 

 necessaries, including tobacco. One market day our friend 

 found himself without tobacco, and on asking for some, was 

 told there was none till the mistress came home in the even- 

 ing. He was in despair ; went to the only little village shop, 

 but they did not keep it ; to the two or three houses in the 

 village, but none was to be found. He was the picture of 

 misery all day ; he could eat no dinner ; he wandered about, 

 saliva dropping from his mouth, and looking as if he were 

 insane. The tobacco did not come till about seven in the 

 evening. His relief was great and instantaneous, and after a 

 pipe he was able to eat some supper. Had the tobacco not 

 come he declared he would have died, and I believe he would 

 have had a serious illness. This terrible slavery to the 

 smoking habit gave the final blow to my disinclination to 

 tobacco, which has been rendered more easy to me by my 

 generally good appetite and my thorough enjoyment of 



