TEA AND TOBACCO, 171 
people talk, that smoking was the only selfish indulgence in. 
the world. When people argue in this strain, I immediately 
assume the offensive. I roll back the tide of war right into 
the enemy’s intrenched camp of comfortable customs; I 
attack the expensive and unnecessary indulgences of ladies 
and gentlemen who do not smoke. I take cigar-smoking as 
an expense of, say, half-a-crown a-day, and pipe-smoking at 
threepence. 
“TI then compare the cost of these indulgences with the 
cost of other indulgences not a. whit more necessary, which 
no one ever questions a man’s right to if he can pay for 
them. There is luxurious eating, for instance. A womian 
who has got the habit of delicate eating will easily consume 
dainties to the amount of half-a-crown a-day, which cannot 
possibly do her any good beyond the mere gratification of 
the palate. And there is the luxury of carriage-keeping, in 
many instances very detrimental to the health of women, by 
entirely depriving them of the use of their legs. Now, you 
cannot keep a carriage a-going quite as cheaply as a pipe. 
Many a fine meerschaum keeps up its cheerful fire on a 
shilling a-week. Iam not advocating a sumptuary law to 
put down carriages and cookery; I desire only to say that 
people who indulge in these expensive and wholly superflu- 
ous luxuries, have no right to be so hard on smokers for 
their indulgence. 
“ Nearly every gentleman who drinks good wine at all will 
drink the value of half-a-crown a-day. The ladies do not 
blame him for this, Half-a-dozen glasses of good wine are 
not thought an extravagance in any man of fair means, but 
women exclaim when a man spends the same amount in 
smoking cigars. The French habit of coffee-drinking and 
the English habit of tea-drinking are also cases in point. 
They are quite as expensive as ordinary Tobacco-smoking, 
and, like it, defensible only on the ground of the pleasurable 
sensation they communicate to the nervous system. But 
these habits are so universal that no one thinks of attackin 
them, unless now and then some persecuted smoker in self- 
defence. 
“Tea and tobacco are alike seductive, delicious, and dele- 
terious. The two indulgences will, perhaps, become equally 
necessary to the English world. It is high treason to the 
English national feeling to say a word against tea, which is 
now so universally recognized as a national beverage that 
people forget it comes from China, and that it is both alien 
