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
"But just as the world would be a tame and an insipid
institution were all men's tastes alike, so the world of
smokers would lose much of its romance were all the lovers
of the weed of temperament too robust to love a cigarette.
Brevity and sweetness are proverbially held to constitute
claims upon the respect and admiration of the voluptuous,
and to the cigarette these cannot be denied. There is
something touching in the self-abnegation of a tobaccoite
who will devote five mortal minutes and the sweat of his
refined intelligence, with the skill of his delicate
fingers, to the preparation of a tiny capsule of the weed,
which burns itself to ashes in five minutes more. There is a
butterfly-beauty about the cigarette to which the cigar and
the pipe can lay no claim--a summer charm to stir the dreamy
rapture of a poet, and to excite the Lotus-eating
philosopher even to analogy. Just as the suns, and flowers,
and balmy zephyrs of a century have gone to form the gauzy,
multi-colored insect that flits across your path throughout
a single summer's day, and then returns to dust and vapor,
so the harvest of West-Indian and East-Asian fields, the
long voyage of the mariner, the merchant's hours of soil,
the steam-power and manual labor of the factory, the
thoughtful calculations of the trader, the skill of the
tissue-paper maker, all have gone, and more than these, to
the creation of a fairy-cylinder of Tobacco, which glows,
delights, expires, and meets its end in ten or fifteen
fleeting minutes."
Although the cigarette is not a favorite with us, still we admire its
use as a sort of appendage to a good dinner, and as preparatory work
for a "good smoke." The Spaniards have always been great lovers of
their minute rolls, and with them, no other method of burning tobacco
appears so delicate or refined. Especially is this true among the
ladies, who prefer "Seville cigarettes" to all others. Many smokers
make their own cigarettes, sometimes using Havana tobacco, and
sometimes making them of two or more kinds. An excellent cigar is made
by using equal parts of Virginia and Perique tobacco, or equal parts
of Havana and Perique. A fine flavored cigarette is also made from
Yara and Havana tobacco, equal parts of each being used. Thos. Hood
has signalized his attachment to cigar in the following pleasing
little poem:--
THE CIGAR.
"Some sigh for this and that,
My wishes don't go far;
The world may wag at will,
So I have my cigar.
"Some fret themselves to death
With Whig and Tory jar;
I don't care which is in,
So I have my cigar.
"Sir John requests my vote,
And so does Mr. Marr;
I don't care how it does,
So I have my cigar.
"Some want a German row,
Some wish a Russian war;
I care not. I'm at peace,
So I have my cigar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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