Relieves you from your fleshy incubus, And kills you quietly without a fuss. All things must end, and even this effusion Of smoke finds here its natural conclusion; My cloud is blown, my Pipe smoked fairly through- To all the benefits that smokers gain, At least be candid, and confess there are NOTES TO PART II. Page 43, line 12. Thou always art all things unto all men. Of the pleasures of smoking under ordinary circumstances, every one can judge for himself; those who have been in hot climates can better appreciate its advantages; and we read in the accounts of Australian shepherds and gold-diggers, American trappers and backwoodsmen, and others whose course of life exposes them to the greatest hardships and privations, that their pipe is their most cherished friend and inseparable companion-their resource, when all others fail, against cold, fatigue, and hunger. And in that thrilling narrative, which every Englishman has read, of the defence of Lucknow, we find that one of the privations most severely felt by the harassed and heroic garrison was the want of tobacco a want which they endeavoured to supply by all sorts of substitutes, determined to smoke something if they could not get the thing. Page 44, line 9. Nor is the worship of the weed confined Unto Creation's lords, of stronger mind. If sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, why should not smoke for the gander be smoke for the goose? Page 47, line 2. By James's "Counterblaste" in vain assailed. That sagacious monarch, James I., seems to have had as great a horror of tobacco as of witches, and exerted himself as much to prevent the burning of the one as to procure the burning of the other. He wrote a work which he called "A Counterblaste against Tobacco;" but puffing was not to be put down in those days, any more than in the present. Page 50, line 12. And when the blood of all the Tudors rose, Which certainly was a forcible way Page 54, line 8. Even in spite of a plebeian name. Say Brown, Jones Loyd, or Smith. Page 59, line 5. He who had urged them to the sacred strife, Though Byron did not die with harness on his back, fighting for liberty, it is no stretch of poetic licence to say that he lost his life in her cause; besides, he gave what some people value more than blood-his money. Page 65, line 15. Look on the outcast wretch who walks the street. There can be, I trust, no indelicacy in touching on a topic which, under the title of the "Delicate Question," has been thrust before the eyes of the public day after day in the newspapers. The subject, delicate or not, is most distressing; and, to say the least, many unfortunates, however much they are to be blamed, are also to be pitied-society first degrades them, and then reproaches them for being degraded. It may be right that sin should bring suffering, but if society were as hard on all sins as on theirs, what would become of some of its most respectable members? Page 75, line 6. Put not your faith in modern miracles. With the greatest possible respect for all shades of genuine religious opinion, it is difficult to have patience with men of education who, professing to be ministers of Christ, in the nineteenth century, give their countenance to such mummeries as the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, the Virgin of Salsette, and preach as a dogma the Immaculate Conception and Deification of the Virgin Mary; and it is no doubt equally difficult for them to have patience with us, who laugh at their clumsy impositions. Page 76, line 9. If one be right in damning all the rest, How few of all earth's millions can be blest! According to statistics published some years ago by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the following was then the rough calculation of the proportions of the principal religions of the world: Christians Jews 260,000,000 500,000,000 Total 860,000,000 H When we reflect on the innumerable sects into which each of these aggregates is divided, and that each sect teaches, and no doubt conscientiously believes, that salvation is only to be found within its own pale, I think we must hope, if we have any regard for our species, that the prospect of future bliss may not be confined to that very small per centage of them who agree on all points of theology. Page 81, line 7. When a Bishop could smash his score of laymen, It is related of one of these martial members of the church militant that, having scruples about shedding the blood of his enemies, he used in battle a ponderous mace, wherewith he only knocked out their brains. This was probably that Bishop of Beauvais whom Coeur-de-Lion reproached with the unclerical cut of his coat of mail. |