187 A PINCH OF SNUFF. ILL the reader take a pinch of snuff with us? Editor. How do you like it? Reader. Extremely fine! I never saw such snuff. Editor. Precisely so. It is of the sort they call Invisible; or, as the French have it, tabac imaginaire,―imaginary snuff. No macuba equals it. The tonquin bean has a coarse flavor in comparison. To my thinking, it has the hue of Titian's orange-color, and the very tip of the scent of sweet-brier. Reader. In fact, one may perceive in it just what one pleases, or nothing at all. Editor. Exactly that. Reader. Those who take no snuff whatever, or even hate it, may take this, and be satisfied. Ladies, nay brides, may take it. Editor. You apprehend the delicacy of it to a nicety. You will allow, nevertheless, by virtue of the same fineness of perception, that even when you discern, or choose to discern, neither hue, scent, nor substance in it, still there is a very sensible pleasure realized the moment the pinch is offered. Reader. True, the good-will, — that which is passing between us two now. Editor. You have it, that which loosens the tongues of people in omnibuses, and helps to thaw even the frozen-heartedness of diplomacy. Reader. I beg your pardon for a moment; but is thaw, my dear sir, the best word you could have chosen? Snuff can hardly be said to thaw. Editor. (Aside. This it is to set readers upon being critical, and help them to beat their teachers.) You are right. What shall we say? To dissipate, to scatter, to make evaporate? To blow up in a sneeze? Reader. I will leave you to judge of that. - Editor. (Aside. His politeness is equal to his criticism. Oh, penny, twopenny, and three-halfpenny "trash!" You will end in ruining the trade of your inventors!) My dear reader, I wish I could give you snuff made of the finest Brazil in a box of diamond. But good-will is the flower of all snuff-taking; and luckily a pinch of that may be taken equally as well out of horn, or of invisible wood, as of the gifts of emperors. This is the point I was going to speak of. The virtues of snuff itself may be doubted; but the benevolence of an offered pinch and the gratitude of an accepted one are such good things, and snuff-takers have so many occasions of interchanging these, that it is a question whether the harm of the self-indulgence (if any) is not to be allowed for the sake of the social benefit. A grave question! Let us consider it a little with the seriousness becoming snuff-takers, real or imaginary. They are a reflecting race: no men know better that every thing is not a trifle which appears to be such in uncleared eyes, any more than every thing is grand which is of serious aspect or dimensions. A snuff-taker looks up at some mighty error, takes his pinch, and shakes the imposture, like the remnant of the pinch, to atoms, with one "flesh-quake" of head, thumb, and indifference. He also looks into some little nicety of question or of creation,— of the intellectual or visible world, and having sharpened his eyesight with another pinch, and put his brain into proper cephalic condition, discerns it, as it were, microscopically, and pronounces that there is "more in it than the un-snuff-taking would suppose." - We agree with him. The mere fancy of a pinch of snuff, at this moment, enables us to look upon divers worlds of mistake in the history of man but as so many bubbles, breaking, or about to break; while the pipe out of which they were blown assumes all its real superiority in the hands of the grown smoker, the superiority of peace and quiet over war and childish dispute. An atom of good-will is worth an emperor's snuff-box. We happened once to be compelled to moot a point of no very friendly sort with a stranger whom we never saw before, of whom we knew nothing, and whose appearance in the matter we conceived to be altogether unwarrantable. At one of the delicatest of all conjunctures in the question, and when he presented himself in his most equivocal light, what should he do, but, with the best air in the world, take out a snuff-box, and offer us the philanthropy of a pinch? We accepted it with as grave a face as it was offered; but, secretly, the appeal was irresistible. It was as much as to say, "Questions may be mooted, doubts of all sorts entertained, — people are thrown into strange situations in this world; but, abstractedly, what is any thing worth compared with a quiet moment, and a resolution to make the best of a perplexity?" Ever afterwards, whenever the thought of this dispute came into our recollection, the bland idea of the snuff-box always closed our account with it; and our good-will survived, though our perplexity remained also. But this is only a small instance of what must have occurred thousands of times in matters of dispute. Many a fierce impulse of hostility must have been allayed by no greater a movement. Many a one has been caused by less! A few years ago, a petition was presented to the House of Commons on the subject of duelling; by which it appeared that people have challenged and killed one another for words about " geese" and "anchovies" and "a glass of wine." Nay, one person was compelled to fight about our very peace-maker, "a pinch of snuff." But, if so small are the causes of deadly offence, how often must they not have been removed by the judicious intervention of the pinch itself? The geese, anchovies, glass of wine, and all, might possibly have been made harmless by a dozen grains of Havana. The handful of dust with which the Latin poet settles his wars of the bees was the type of the pacifying magic of the snuff-box:— "Hi motus animorum, atque hæc certamina tanta, "These movements of high minds, these mortal foes, If we came Yet snuff-taking is an odd custom. suddenly upon it in a foreign country, it would make us split our sides with laughter. A grave gentleman takes a little casket out of his pocket, puts a finger and thumb in, brings away a pinch of a sort of powder, and then, with the most serious air possible, as if he was doing one of the most important actions of his life (for even with the most indifferent snufftakers there is a certain look of importance), proceeds to thrust and keep thrusting it at his nose! after which he shakes his head, or his waistcoat, or his nose itself, or all three, in the style of a man who has done his duty, and satisfied the most serious claims of his well-being. What should we say to this custom among the inhabitants of a newly discovered island? And to provoke the poor nose in this manner! and call people's attention to it! A late physician, whom we had the pleasure of knowing, and who had a restless temperament, used to amuse us, as he sat pondering in his chair, with taking up a pair of scissors, and delicately poking the tip of his tongue with it; thus taking delight in the borders of an uneasy sensation, for want of a better. We have often thought, that a snuff-taker, fond of a potent snuff, might as well addict himself to the doctor's scissors, or puncture any other part of his face with a fork at Elegant fork-takers might have boxes with little instruments made accordingly, and politely offer them to the company to poke their cheeks with; or they might hover about the eyes, or occasionally practise some slight scarification. Bleeding is accounted cephalic. once. |