Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Transcriber’s Note: The title of this book is given both as ‘St Nicotine _of_ the peace pipe’ and ‘St Nicotine _or_ the peace pipe’. Readers may decide for themselves which is most fitting. ST NICOTINE OR THE PEACE PIPE [Illustration: Drawn & Engraved by F. W. Fairholt TOBACCO PLANTS. _1. Nicotiana Tabacum; 2. N. Rustica; 3. N. Persica._ [_By permission of Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Ld._] ST NICOTINE OF THE PEACE PIPE BY EDWARD VINCENT HEWARD _WITH 4 FULL PAGE PLATES AND 5 TEXT CUTS_ [Illustration] LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1909 INTRODUCTORY The history and associations of tobacco carry the thoughts back to the jubilant days when Good Queen Bess was the idol of her people, to the stirring times when bounding gaiety and lusty banter found expression in unrestrained mirth as readily in the open street as within doors. The writer’s aim in the following chapters has been to bring together (in a somewhat desultory way, it may be) the chief features of interest which the story of the ‘Indian’s herb’ presents to us to-day. The social element undoubtedly dominates all others; this, coupled with the primitive belief in its medicinal properties, at once secured for it the good-will of men longing for knowledge of the New World and ever ready to adopt an indulgence so alluring. That this feeling was universal is shewn by the rapidity with which the smoking habit spread over the Earth wherever there was a human habitation. No less remarkable is the sturdy tenacity with which men everywhere stuck to it despite the determined opposition of potentates and pontiffs.