316 KNOWLEDGE OF THE PLANT. 
acquainted not only with the various kinds grown in his 
own country but also with those of others. Indeed you may. 
often see growing in his garden specimens of Cuban, 
Brazil or Latakia tobacco; such is his love for all that per- 
tains to this great tropical plant. He considers it one of the 
greatest of all the vegetable products and never tires of 
lauding the plant and its use. He sincerely hates all anti- 
tobaccoites and has a supreme disgust for the memory of 
King James I. and all royal foes of the plant. He is, how- 
ever, a man of large and liberal views and bestows his favors 
with a princely hand. Iffortune frowns he may lessen his crop 
but never his attachment for the plant. Amid all the cares 
and perplexities incident to life, he puffs away and as the 
ashes drop from his cigar meditates upon the probable future 
of tobacco growers and all users of the weed. 
The Connecticut tobacco grower is in all respects a man of 
genuine refinement and nobility of soul. He is always 
ready to give information on his particular system of culture, 
and how he obtains such large and fine crops. He is a good 
judge of leaf tobacco, and can tell in a moment the quality 
of his famous variety. He is thoroughly awake to modern 
improvements, and always willing to try new implements, 
such as tobacco hangers or transplanters in his sheds or fields. 
He is just the person one likes to meet, jovial and good- 
natured; he naturally loves the plant he cultivates and uses 
it freely ; lighting his after-dinner cigar or evening pipe with 
a gusto that is peculiar to the grower of tobacco everywhere. 
Indeed he is hardly in a proper frame of mind to converse 
about tobacco until he lights a cigar. 
No other cultivator of the soil gains as many friends as 
the tobacco-grower. His table is well supplied from the. 
choicest his larder affords and he cheerfully welcomes all to 
its side. He is the friend of the poor and the companion of 
the rich. No meanness or low chicanery is his. His attach- 
ment for home, friends, and country is as firm and strong as 
for the plant he cultivates. 
Olmsted in his work “The Seaboard Slave States” 
