264 SNUFF AND SNUFF-BOXES. 



moister article, and shed its superfluous honours over 

 neckcloth and coat. Dr. Johnson was probahly a 

 snuff-taker of this kind. He used to take it out of his 

 waistcoat pocket, instead of a box. There is a species of 

 long-armed snuff-takers, that perform the operation in 

 a style of potent and elaborate preparation, ending with 

 sudden activity. But a smaller and rounder man some- 

 times attempts it. He first puts his head on one side ; 

 then stretches forth the arm, with pinch in hand ; then 

 brings round his hand, as a snuff-taking elephant 

 might his trunk ; and finally, shakes snuff, head and 

 nose together, in a sudden vehemence of convulsion. 

 His eyebrows all the while lifted up, as if to make 

 room for the onset; and when he has ended, he 

 draws himself back to his perpendicular, and generally 

 proclaims the victory he has won over the insipidity 

 of the previous moment, by a sniff and a great 

 "Hah!" 



There were others by no means satisfied with such a 

 quiet satire on the habit. By them it was declared : 

 "physicians observe that more people have died of apo- 

 plexies in one year since the use of snuff has come up 

 than before in one hundred ; and indeed most, if not all, 

 of those who die of apoplexies and other such sudden 

 deaths, upon inquiry will be found to have been great 

 snuff-takers; as it happens usually in Spain and Portu- 

 gal, where of late years the common disease that carries 

 people off is apoplexy."* Death was in fact paraded as 



* A Treatise of the Use of Tobacco, <£c, 1722. Tlie Edinburgh Ency do- 



