290 The Soverane Herbe 



wholesale and retail purchasers. The wholesale 

 dealers buy up stumps at about a franc a pound, 

 clean them, cut up the tobacco fine, and sell it in 

 fancy packages as smuggled tobacco for three or four 

 francs a pound, which is two francs below the price 

 for Government tobacco of similar quality. Smokers 

 in financial low-water buy a pound of stumps at a 

 time for their own consumption. Like other markets, 

 that in cigar-stumps has its fluctuations, according to 

 the demand and supply. In winter, when there is 

 less smoking in the streets, few stumps are found 

 and brought to Place Maubert, and merchants get 

 10 or 15 per cent, more for their wares than in 

 summer, when the boulevards and squares are crowded 

 with smokers. In London also there are gatherers of 

 fag-ends, but they lack the dignity of their Parisian 

 confreres. They have no exchange, and dispose of 

 their 'hard-up,' as the refuse tobacco and cigar-butts 

 are called, in common lodging-houses. 



In the East, as we have seen, children begin to 

 smoke while still at their mothers' breasts ; but in 

 this country the two-thirds of the male population 

 who smoke have acquired, not been taught, the prac- 

 tice. This is a fact that renders the widespread use 

 of tobacco most remarkable. Some people can smoke 

 anything at the first time of asking ; others can never 

 smoke, try as they may. The vast majority of smokers 

 have acquired the habit only by degrees, and their 

 nicotian experiences comprise the usual disasters. 

 There must be something very fascinating in smoking 

 that leads men through all the horrors of a first 

 pipe, and still worse first cigar, to complete and 



