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It is curious to see the various modes in which people take snuff. Some do it by little fits and starts, and get over the thing quickly. These are epigrammatic snuff-takers, who come to the point as fast as possible, and to whom the pungency is every thing. They generally use a sharp and severe snuff, -a sort of essence of pins' points. Others are all urbanity and polished demeanor: they value the style as much as the sensation, and offer the box around them as much out of dignity as benevolence. Some take snuff irritably, others bashfully, others in a manner as dry as the snuff itself, generally with an economy of the vegetable; others with a luxuriance of gesture, and a lavishness of supply, that announces a moister article, and sheds its superfluous honors over neckcloth and coat. Dr. Johnson's was probably a snuff 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-taker, that performs the operation in a style of potent and elaborate preparation, ending with a sudden activity. But smaller and rounder men sometimes attempt 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 are lifted up, as if to make the more 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!"

193

A PINCH OF SNUFF.

CONCLUDED.

|ROM the respect which we showed in our last to scented snuffs, and from other indica

tions which will doubtless have escaped us in our ignorance of his art, the scientific snuff-taker will have concluded that we are no brother of the box. And he will be right. But we hope we only give the greater proof thereby of the toleration that is in us, and our wish not to think ill of a practice merely because it is not our own. We confess we are inclined to a charitable regard, nay, provided it be handsomely and cleanly managed, to a certain respect, for snuff-taking, out of divers considerations: first, as already noticed, because it helps to promote good-will; second, because we have known some very worthy snuff-takers; third, out of our regard for the snuff-taking times of Queen Anne, and the wits of France; and last, because in the benevolence and imaginativeness and exceeding width of our philosophy (which fine terms we apply to it in order to give a hint to those who might consider it a weakness and superstition), because we have a certain veneration for all great events and prevailing customs, that have given a character to the history of society in the course ages. It would be hard to get us to think contemptuously of the mummies of Egypt, of the cere

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moniousness of the Chinese, of the betel-nut of the Turks and Persians, nay, of the garlic of the south of Europe; and so of the tea-drinking, coffee-drinking, tobacco-smoking, and snuff-taking which have come to us from the Eastern and American nations. We know not what great providential uses there might be in such customs, or what worse or more frivolous things they prevent, till the time comes for displacing them. "The wind bloweth where it listeth;" and so, for aught we know, doth the "cloud" of the tobacco-pipe. We are resolved, for our parts, not to laugh with the scorner," but even to make merry with submission; nay, to undermine (when we feel compelled to do so) with absolute tenderness to the thing dilapidated. Let the unphilosophic lover of tobacco (if there be such a person), to use a phrase of his own, "put that in his pipe, and smoke it.”

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But there is one thing that puzzles us in the history of the Indian weed and its pulverization; and that is, how lovers and ladies ever came to take snuff. In

England, perhaps, it was never much done by the latter, till they grew too old to be "particular," or thought themselves too sure of their lovers; but in France, where the animal spirits think less of obstacles in the way of inclination, and where the resolution to please and be pleased is, or was, of a fancy less nice and more accommodating, we are not aware that the ladies in the time of the Voltaires and Du Chatelets ever thought themselves either too old to love, or too young to take snuff. We confess, whether it is from the punctilios of a colder imagination or the perils incidental to a warmer one, that, although we

are interested in comprehending the former privilege, we never could do the same with the latter. A bridegroom in one of the periodical essayists, describing his wife's fondness for rouge and carmine, complains that he can never make pure, unsophisticated way to her cheek, but is obliged, like Pyramus in the story, to kiss through a wall,—to salute through a crust of paint and washes:

"Wall, vile wall, which did those lovers sunder."

This is bad enough; and, considering perhaps a due healthiness of skin, worse: yet the object of paint is to imitate health and loveliness; the wish to look well is in it. But snuff!-turtle-doves don't take snuff. A kiss is surely not a thing to be “sneezed at.”

Fancy two lovers in the time of Queen Anne, or Louis the Fifteenth, each with snuff-box in hand, who have just come to an explanation, and who, in the hurry of their spirits, have unthinkingly taken a pinch, just at the instant when the gentleman is going to salute the lips of his mistress! He does so, finds his honest love as frankly returned, and is in the act of bringing out the words, "Charming creature!" when a sneeze overtakes him!

"Cha Cha Cha Charming creature!"

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What a situation! A sneeze! O Venus! where is such a thing in thy list?

The lady, on her side, is under the like malapropos influence, and is obliged to divide one of the sweetest of all bashful and loving speeches with the shock of the sneeze respondent:

"O Richard! Sho - Sho- Sho Should you
think ill of me for this!"

Imagine it.

We have nothing to say against the sneeze abstract. In all nations it seems to have been counted of great significance, and worth respectful attention, whether advising us of good or ill. Hence the "God bless you!" still heard among us when people sneeze; and the "Felicità!" ("Good luck to you!") of the Italians. A Latin poet, in one of his most charming effusions, though not, we conceive, with the delicacy of a Greek, even makes Cupid sneeze at sight of the happiness of two lovers: :

"Hoc ut dixit, Amor, sinistram ut ante,
Dextram sternuit approbationem."

CATULLUS.

"Love, at this charming speech and sight,

Sneezed his sanction from the right."

That omen

But he does not make the lovers sneeze. remained for the lovers of the snuff-box,-people more social than nice.

We have no recollection of any self-misgiving in this matter, on the part of the male sex, during the times we speak of. They are a race who have ever thought themselves warranted in taking liberties which they do not allow their gentler friends; and we cannot call to mind any passage in the writings of the French or English wits in former days, implying the least distrust of his own right and propriety and charmingness, in taking snuff, on the part of the gentleman in love. The "beaux," marquisses, men of fashion, Sir Harry Wildairs, &c., all talk of and

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