The following anecdote is equally ludicrous. Before tobacco was much known in Germany, some soldiers belonging to a cavalry regiment were quartered in a German village. One of them, a trumpeter, happened to be a negro. A peasant, who had never seen a black man before, and who knew nothing about tobacco, watched, though at a safe distance, the trumpeter, while the latter groomed and fed his horse. As soon as this business was dispatched, the negro filled his pipe and began to smoke it. Great had been the peasant's bewilderment before; great was his terror now. The terror reached an intolerable point when the negro took the pipe from his mouth, offered it to the peasant, and asked him, in the best language he could command, to take a whiff. "No, no!" cried the peasant, in exceeding alarm; "no, no! Mr. Devil; I do not wish to eat fire." Henry Fielding, in "The Grub Street Opera" written about a century ago, has the following verses on Tobacco:-- "Let the learned talk of books, The glutton of cooks, The lover of Celia's soft smack--O! No mortal can boast So noble a toast, As a pipe of accepted tobacco. "Let the soldier for fame, And a general's name, In battle get many a thwack--O! Let who will have most Who will rule the rooste, Give me but a pipe of tobacco. "Tobacco gives wit To the dullest old cit, And makes him of politics crack--O! The lawyers i' th' hall Were not able to bawl, Were it not for a whiff of tobacco. "The man whose chief glory Is telling a story, Had never arrived at the smack--O! Between every heying, And as I was saying, Did he not take a whiff of tobacco. "The doctor who places Much skill in grimaces, And feels your pulse running tic tack--O! Would you know his chief skill? It is only to fill And smoke a good pipe of tobacco. "The courtiers alone To this weed are not prone; Would you know what 'tis makes them so slack--O? 'Twas because it inclined To be honest the mind, And therefore they banished tobacco." One of the most curious pieces of verse ever written on tobacco is the following by Southey, entitled "Elegy on a Quid of Tobacco:"-- "It lay before me on the close-grazed grass, Beside my path, an old tobacco quid: And shall I by the mute adviser pass Without one serious thought? now Heaven forbid! "Perhaps some idle drunkard threw thee there-- Some husband spendthrift of his weekly hire; One who for wife and children takes no care, But sits and tipples by the ale-house fire. "Ah! luckless was the day he learned to chew! Embryo of ills the quid that pleased him first; Thirsty from that unhappy quid he grew, Then to the ale-house went to quench his thirst. "So great events from causes small arise-- The forest oak was once an acorn seed; And many a wretch from drunkenness who dies, Owes all his evils to the Indian weed.