Besides, this single luxury of smoke, at a cost of one cent and three sevenths per diem, is the full equivalent of all the luxuries which wealth can buy! None but a smoker, or one who has been a smoker, can realize this truth; but it is a truth. That short black pipe does actually place the hod-carrier, so far as mere luxury goes, on a par with Commodore Vanderbilt or the Prince of Wales. Tokay, champagne, turtle, game, and all the other luxurious commodities are not, taken altogether, so much to those who can daily enjoy them, as poor Paddy's pipe is to him. Indeed, the few rich people with whose habits I chance to be acquainted seldom touch such things, and never touch them except to please others. They all appear to go upon the system of the late Lord Palmerston, who used to say to his new butler, "Provide for my guests whatever the season affords; but for _me_ there must be always a leg of mutton and an apple-pie." Let the Prince of Wales (or any other smoker) be taken to a banqueting-hall, the tables of which should be spread with all the dainties which persons of wealth are erroneously supposed to be continually consuming, but over the door let there be written the terrible words, "No smoking." Then show him an adjoining room, with a table exhibiting Lord Palmerston's leg of mutton and apple-pie, plus a bundle of cigars. If any one doubts which of these two feasts the Prince of Wales would choose, we tell that doubting individual he has never been a smoker. Now the short pipe of the hod-carrier is just as good to him as the regalias could be that cost two hundred dollars a thousand in Havana, and sixty cents each in New York. If you were to give him one of those regalias, he would prefer to cut it up and smoke it in his pipe, and then he would not find it as good as the tobacco he usually smokes. The poor laborer's pipe, therefore, is a potent equalizer. To the enjoyment of pleasures purely luxurious there is a limit which is soon reached; and I maintain that a poor man gets as much of this _kind_ of pleasure out of his pipe as a prince or a railroad king can extract from all the costly wines and viands of the table. If there is a man in the world who ought to smoke, that ancient hod-carrier is the man. A stronger case for smoking cannot be selected from ordinary life. Does it pay him? After an attentive and sympathetic consideration of his case, I am compelled reluctantly to conclude that it does not.