228 “A PINCH OF SNUFF.” 
and oft and many a time have I called up by it the courteous 
spirit of its owner, to regulate my own in the jostlings of 
the world; they had found full employment for his, as I 
learnt from his story, till about the forty-fifth year of his 
age, when upon some military services ill-requited, and meet- 
ing at the same time with a disappointment in the tenderest 
of passions, he abandoned the sword and the sex together, 
and took sanctuary, not so much in his convent as in himself. 
I feel a damp upon my spirits, as I am going to add, that in 
my last return through Calais, upon inquiring after Father 
Lorenzo, I heard he had been dead near three months, and 
was buried, not in his convent, but according to his desire, 
in a little cemetery belonging to it about two leagues off. I 
had a strong desire to see where they had laid him, when, 
upon pulling out his little horn box, as I sat by his grave, 
and plucking a nettle or two at the head of it, which had no 
business to grow there, they all struck together so forcibl 
upon my affections that I burst into a flood of tears—but 
am as weak as a woman; I beg the world not to smile, but 
pity me.” 
Many pleasing effusions have been written promoted doubt- 
less by a sneeze among which the following on “A pinch of 
Snuff” from “The Sportsman Magazine,” exhibits the cus- 
tom and the benefits ascribed to its indulgence. 
“With mind or body sore distrest, 
Or with repeated cares opprest, 
What sets the aching heart at rest? 
A pinch of snuff! 
“Or should some sharp and gnawing pain 
Creep round the noddle of the brain, 
What puts all things to rights again? 
A pinch of snuff! 
“When speech and tongue together fail, 
What helps old ladies in their tale, 
And adds fresh canvass to their sail? 
A pinch of snuff! 
“Or when some drowsy parson prays, 
And still more drowsy people gaze, 
What opes their eyelids with amaze? 
A pinch of snuff! 
