Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and CommerceBillings, E. R.
History
Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce
Billings, E. R.
Tobacco -- History; Tobacco industry -- History; Tobacco use
"With thee the poor man can abide
Oppression, want, the scorn of pride,
The curse of penury,
Companion of his lonely state,
He is no longer desolate,
And still can brave an adverse fate,
With honest worth and thee!
"All honor to the patriot bold,
Who brought instead of promised gold,
Thy leaf to Britain's shore;
It cost him life; but thou shall raise
A cloud of fragrance to his praise,
And bards shall hail in deathless lays
The valiant knight of yore.
"Ay, Raleigh! thou wilt live till Time
Shall ring his last oblivious chime,
The fruitful theme of story;
And man in ages hence shall tell,
How greatness, virtue, wisdom fell,
When England sounded out thy knell,
And dimmed her ancient glory.
"And thou, O Plant! shall keep his name
Unwither'd in the scroll of fame,
And teach us to remember;
He gave with thee content and peace,
Bestow'd on life a longer lease,
And bidding ev'ry trouble cease,
Made Summer of December!"
The smoker of cigarettes is passionately attached to his "little roll"
and regards this mode of obtaining the flavor of tobacco the best. The
finest are made in Havana and, vast quantities are used by the Cubans
and Spaniards. A writer in "The Tobacco Plant" gives this pleasing
effusion in regard to them:--
"Your cigarette is a sort of hybrid--half-pipe and
half-cigar; neither the one nor the other; neither the
delight of the epicure nor the solace of the true
tobacco-lover. Far be it from us to deny, or even to
question, its value, its utility, or its charm. We have
smoked too many to dream of treating them with
scorn--cigarettes of Virginia shag, strong, pungent,
luscious; of light and fragrant Persian, innocuous and
soothing; cigarettes rolled by ladies' dainty fingers,
compressed by elegant French machines of silk and silver,
cut, stamped, and gummed by prosy, matter-of-fact, and even
vulgar Titanic engines in great tobacco-factories. But the
thorough-paced smoker renders to his cigarette only a
secondary and diluted adoration: it is nice, it is delicate,
it is pretty--a thing to be toyed with, to be fondled, even
to burn one's fingers (or, perchance, one's lips) withal;
but by no means an object to call forth a passion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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