358 CHEWING TOBACCO. [CHAP. XL. 



practice. There is enough of it to be very annoying 

 in steam-boats and railway-cars, but far less so as we 

 journey northwards ; and I never saw, even in the 

 South, any chewing of the weed in drawing-rooms, 

 although we were told in South Carolina that some 



O 



old gentlemen still indulged in this habit. That it is 

 comparatively rare in the New England States, was 

 attested by an anecdote related to me of a captain 

 who commands one of the steamers on Lake Cham- 

 plain, who prided himself on the \vhiteness of his 

 deck, intended to be kept as a promenade. Observing 

 a Southerner occasionally polluting its clean floor, 

 he ordered a boy to follow him up and down with a 

 swab, to the infinite diversion of the passengers, and 

 the no small indignation of the Southerner, when at 

 length he discovered how his footsteps had been 

 dodged. The governor of a Penitentiary told me, 

 that to deprive prisoners of tobacco was found to be 

 a very efficient punishment, and that its use was 

 prohibited in the New England madhouses, as being 

 too exciting. 



From Boston we went to Ipswich, Massachusetts, 

 to visit Mr. Oakes, the botanist, with whom we had 

 spent many pleasant days in the White Mountains.* 

 He set out with us on an excursion to Wenham 

 Lake, from which so much ice is annually exported 

 to England and other parts of the world. 



This lake lies about twenty miles to the north 

 east of Boston. It has a small island in the middle 

 of it, is about a mile long and forty feet deep, and 



* See Vol. I. p. 71. 



