The Seven Sisters of Sleep: Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the WorldCooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt)
History
The Seven Sisters of Sleep: Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World
Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt)
Drug abuse; Narcotics; Psychotropic drugs; Psychotropic plants; Tobacco use
A Spaniard knows no crime so black that it should be visited by the
deprivation of tobacco. In the Havana, the convict who is deprived of
the ordinary comforts, or even of the necessaries of life, may enjoy
his cigar, if he can beg or borrow it; if he stole it, the offence
would be considered venial. At the doorway of most of the shops hang
little sheet-iron boxes filled with lighted coals, at which the
passer-by may light cigars; and on the balustrade of the staircase
of every house stands a small chafing dish for the same purpose.
Fire for his cigar, is the only thing for which a Spaniard does
not think it necessary to ask and thank with ceremonious courtesy.
If he has permitted his cigar to go out, he steps up to the first
man he meets—nobleman or galley slave, as the case may be—and the
latter silently hands his smoking weed; for it is impossible that two
Spaniards should meet and not have one lighted cigar between them.
The light obtained, the lightee returns the cigar to the lighter in
silence. A short and suddenly checked motion of the hand, as the cigar
is extended, is the only acknowledgment of the courtesy. This is never,
however, omitted. Women smoke as well as men; and in a full railroad
car, every person, man, woman, and child, may be seen smoking. To
placard “no smoking allowed,” and enforce it, would ruin the road.
A regular smoker in Cuba will consume perhaps twenty or thirty cigars
a day, but they are all fresh. What we call a fine old cigar, a Cuban
would not smoke.
At Manilla, the women smoke as well as the men. One manufactory employs
about 9,000 women in making the Manilla cheroots; another establishment
employs 3,000 men in making paper cigars or cigarettes. The paper
cigars are chiefly smoked by men; the women prefer the “puros,” the
largest they can get.
The Binua of Johore, of both sexes, indulge freely in tobacco. It
is their favourite luxury. The women are often seen seated together
weaving mats, and each with a cigar in her mouth. When speaking, it
is transferred to the perforation in the ear. When met paddling their
canoes, the cigar is seldom wanting. The Mintira women are also much
addicted to tobacco, but they do not smoke it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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