Snuff-taking is an old custom; yet, if we came 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 were doing one of the most
important acts of his life――for, even with the most indifferent
snuff-taker, there is a certain look of importance――proceeds to thrust
it into his nose; after which he shakes his head, or his waiscoat, 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.
It is curious to see the various ways in which people take snuff. Some
do it by little fits and starts, and get over the thing quickly. There
are epigrammatic snuff-takers, who come to the point as fast as
possible, and to whom the pungency is everything. 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 well as
the sensation, and offer the box around them as much out of dignity as
benevolence.
Some people 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 more moist article, and sheds its superfluous
honors upon neckcloth and coat. Dr. Johnson was probably 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 who perform the
operation in a style of potent and elaborate preparation, ending with
a sudden activity. He puts his head on one side, then stretches forth
his arm with pinch in hand, then brings round his arm as a
snuff-taking elephant might his trunk, and finally shakes snuff, head
and nose together, in a sudden vehemence of convulsion. His eyebrows
are all the time lifted up, as if to make more room for the onset, and
when he has ended, he draws himself up to the perpendicular, and
generally proclaims the victory he has won over the insipidity of the
previous moment, by a snuff and a great “Flah!”
Squirrels.
In the second volume of the Museum, we told some things about
squirrels in general, but did not say anything about the different
kinds particularly, which we will now proceed to do. They are so
interesting a class (or, as the naturalists would say, genus) of
animals, and especially so to children and young persons, that we
think the readers of Merry’s Museum will like to hear more about them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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