252 The Soverane Herbe 



from immoderate use of tobacco. The seer admitted 

 the probability of this hypothesis, and said he would 

 give up tobacco for a month to see the effect of 

 abstinence. A day or two later a friend called to 

 inquire progress in Carlyle's self-denying ordinance. 

 ' Oh,' replied Carlyle, ' I've given in. I was meeserable 

 with it and I was meeserable without it ; I think I 

 may as well be meeserable with it.' 



Ruskin heaped scorn on those who ' pollute the 

 pure air of morn with cigar-smoke.' More are of 

 Lytton's way of thinking : ' A pipe ! It is a great 

 comforter, a pleasant soother. Blue devils fly before 

 its honest breath ! It ripens the brain, it opens the 

 heart, and the man who smokes thinks like a sage 

 and acts like a Samaritan.' 



Hawthorne smoked, and discussing the philosophy 

 of tobacco, awarded the highest honours to the pipe. 

 Oliver Wendell Holmes, the genial autocrat, called 

 himself a tobacconalian. ' Really,' he said once, ' I 

 must not smoke so persistently ; I must turn over a 

 new leaf — a tobacco leaf — and have a cigar only after 

 each ' — he paused as if to say ' meal,' but continued 

 ' after each cigar.' 



At the age of seventy-three Darwin declared that 

 nothing rested and soothed him more after hard work 

 than a cigarette. Huxley's conversion to the use of 

 tobacco, as related by himself to a sectional meeting 

 of the British Association, forms an amusing story. 



' For forty years,' said Huxley, * tobacco had been 

 a deadly poison to me. (Applause.) As a medical 

 student I tried to smoke, but at every attempt 

 tobacco stretched me upon the floor. On entering 



