56 The Soverane Herbe 



bejewelled hookah of some wealthy magnate or 

 Eastern sultan, tobacco appears in its most divine 

 form. There is no diminutive of tobacco ; it is wholly 

 superlative ; there are no degrees of comparison in 

 its use. The millionaire, the pauper, the brawny 

 labourer, the learned scholar, the wildest savage, the 

 oldest and the youngest alike enjoy tobacco. It 

 matters not whether they live in the farthest north 

 with sunless days and perpetual frost, in the fair 

 fields of favoured lands, or in the sweltering heat 

 and rich luxuriance of the tropics, tobacco is ever 

 the same to its devotees, be they black or white, 

 red or yellow, man or woman. Tobacco knows not 

 colour, sex nor creed, country, age nor race. On the 

 world-wide empire of tobacco the sun never sets. In 

 all the intermediate states of light and darkness there 

 rises the incense of tobacco and the red glow of 

 countless pipes. The Occident world smokes, and 

 when it slumbers the Orient takes up the pleasant 

 task, pouring forth incense in praise of tobacco's joys 

 and inspiration. If ever the Utopian dream of the 

 brotherhood of man be realized, tobacco will have 

 had no small share in its realization. Tobacco draws 

 men together and binds them in the common bond of 

 sympathy as smokers. It is the true democrat, the 

 only Volapuk, the veritable cosmopolite. Bring 

 together a Hindu and an Englishman ; they know not 

 a word of each other's language, but tobacco binds 

 them together, and they sit in such silent converse 

 as smoke alone can afford. Tobacco has played 

 a greater part in the cultivation of man and the 

 progress of civilization than has ever been credited 

 to the divine herb. 



