"When the grinding of the snuff is completed it is then ready for flavouring, and in this consists the great art and secret of the trade. Receipts for peculiar flavors are handed down from father to son as most valuable heir-looms, and these receipts are in fact a valuable property in many instances, for so delicate is the nose of your snuff-taker that he can detect the slightest variation in the preparation of his favorite snuff. It is related of one old snuff-maker in London, who had acquired a handsome fortune and retired from business, that he made it a consideration with his successors that he should be allowed, so long as he lived, to attend one day in the week at the business and flavor all the snuff. Most people will also be familiar with some one of the numerous versions of the origin of the once famous Lundy Foote Snuff, better known as 'Irish Blackguard.' "The excise are very rigid in their laws for regulating the manufacture of snuff; and with the exception of a little common salt, which is added to make the tobacco keep, and alkalies for bringing out the flavor, nothing is allowed to be used but a few essential oils. And here we must digress for a moment to correct a popular error, viz., that snuff contains ground glass, put there for titillating purposes. What appears to be ground glass is only the little crystals or small particles of alkali that have not been dissolved. So that fastidious snuff-takers may dismiss this bugbear at once and forever. "The essential oils referred to form a very expensive item to the manufacture of snuff. The ladies would be much surprised to see a dusty snuff-maker drain off five pounds' worth of pure unadulterated otto-of-roses into a tin can, and as they (the ladies) would suppose, throw it away on a heap of what would appear to them rubbishy dust in one corner of the snuff-room. Of course the ladies would consider the proper place for it to be on the cambric handkerchief, but this idea would be about the last to occur to your matter-of-fact snuff-maker. [Illustration: Perfuming snuff.]