280 SENTIMENT. 
ply on the Thames, conveying the pride of the city to Grave- 
send and Margate, no smoking is allowed abaft the funnel, 
and where, in public-houses ashore, no gentleman is permitted 
to smoke in the parlor before two o’clock in the afternoon, 
A pipe of tobacco, or a cigar, after a day’s hard exercise. 
whether mental or bodily, and after the cravings of hunger 
and thirst are appeased, may be fairly ranked amongst the 
most delightful and most harmless of all earthly luxuries. It 
fills the mind with pleasing visions, and the heart with kindly 
feelings. A hard-working laborer, smoking by the side of 
his hearth at night, presents a perfect picture of quiet enjoy- 
ment. I see him now in my mind’seye. He is seated inan 
old high-backed, cushionless arm-chair, but an easy one, nev- 
ertheless, to him, who from dawn till sunset, has been en- 
gaged in ploughing, thrashing, ditching, or mowing. With 
one leg thrown over the other, he quietly reclines backward, 
and with an expression of perfect mental composure, he gazes 
on the smoke that ascends from his pipe. There is a senti- 
ment-exciting power* in the smoke of tobacco when perceived 
by the eye, as well as a pleasing sedative effect when inhaled ; 
and those smokers who have any doubt of the fact should 
take a pipe with théir eyes closed. A person who smokes 
with his eyes shut cannot very well tell whether his cigar is 
lighted or not. How soothing is a pipe or a cigar to a wearied 
sportsman, on his return to his inn from the moors! As he 
sits quietly smoking, he thinks of the absent friends whom 
he will gratify with ‘presents of grouse ; and, in a state of per- 
fect contentment with himself and all the world, he deter- 
mines to give all his game away. Full of such kindly feel- 
ings, he retires to bed; but, alas, with day-light, when the 
eftect of the tobacco has subsided, the old leaven of selfishness 
prevails, and his good intentions are abandoned. ‘ Mary,’ 
said an old Cumberland farmer to his daughter, when she 
was once asking him to buy her a new beaver, ‘why dost 
thou always tease me about such things when I’m quietly 
smoking my pipe? ‘Because ye are always best-tempered 
then, feyther,’ was the reply. ‘I believe, lass, thou’s reet,’ 
rejoined the farmer ; ‘for when I was a lad, I remember that 
my poor feyther was just the same; after he had smoked a 
pipe or twee he wad ha’ gi’en his head away if it had been 
oose. 
*The smoke ascending from the snuff of a candle could excite 6 ecntimental feeling in 
the minds of Wordsworth and Sir George Beaumont, though it seems to baye bad no such 
effect on the mind of Crabbe.—Lockhart's Life of Sir Waiter Scott. 
