The royal _Counterblaste_ proclaims that ‘smoke becomes a kitchen far better than a dining-chamber; and yet it makes a kitchen oftentimes in the inward parts of men, soyling and infecting with an unctuous and oyly kind of soote, as hath been found in some great tobacco takers, that after death were opened.’ ‘Have you not reason then to be ashamed and to forbear this filthie noveltie, so basely grounded, so foolishly received, and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming yourselves both in person and in goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanitie upon you; by the custom thereof making yourselves to be wondered at by all forraine civil nations, and all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned.’ King James clinches his argument with a logical acumen there is no resisting. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘since we imitate the beastly and slavish Indians in taking tobacco, do we not imitate them in _walking naked_? as they do’—an extraordinary idea to occur to one accustomed to wear dagger-proof quilted dress—‘preferring glass beads and feathers to gold and precious stones? as they do; yea, why do we not deny God and adore the devil? as they do.’ Then comes his famous climax: ‘A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the orgain (brain), dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.’ If, after this display of royal indignation, stiff-necked ones still cast fond looks at the ‘emblem of hell,’ let them turn their attention to the King’s words of wisdom stored up in a _Collection of Witty Apothegms_. Things that before were obscure to mental vision are here illuminated with a new radiance; it is made clear to us that ‘tobacco was the lively image and pattern of hell, for that it had, by illusion, in it all the parts and vices of the world whereby hell may be gained—to wit, first: It is a smoke; so are the vanities of this world. Secondly: It delighteth them that take it; so do the pleasures of the world delight the men of the world. Thirdly: It maketh men drunken and light in the head; so do the vanities of the world, men are drunken wherewith. Fourthly: He that taketh tobacco saith he cannot leave it, _it doth bewitch him!_… And, further, besides all this, it is like hell in the very substance of it, for it is a stinking, loathsome thing, and so is hell.’ But James had his moments of gaiety; he could jest over the arch enemy, and it would be most unfair to his memory to pass by any playful attempt at jocularity that for an instant flickered over his dreary brain. In the treasury of wisdom already mentioned, we are told that his Majesty once remarked that ‘if he were to invite the devil to dinner he should have three dishes: 1. A pig; 2. A pole of ling and mustard; and (3) a pipe of tobacco for digesture.’