Seated upon the turf, they gave themselves up to the pleasing influence that flows from the pipe. Is there any thing equal to it? How did the ancients contrive to while away the time without it? Had they known its effects how they would have cherished it! We should now be gazing on the ruins of venerable temples, reared by adoring votaries to the goddess Tabaca. Boys at school would have construed passages about her. Lempriere, Smith, Anthon, Drissler, and others would have done honor to her. Classic mythology would have been full of her presence. Olympian Jove would have been presented to us with this divinity as his constant attendant, and a nimbus around his immortal brows of her making. Bacchus would have had a rival, a superior! Poets would have told how TABACA went over the world girt in that but set off the more her splendid radiance. We should have known how much Bacchus had to do with [Transcriber's Note: Greek Transliteration] ta bakcheia [/end Greek]; a chapter which will probably be a lost one in the History of Civilization. But that he who smokes should drink beer is quite indisputable. Whether the beer is to be X, XX, or XXX; or whether the brewer's name should begin with an A, as in Alsopp, and run through the whole alphabet, ending with V, as in Vassar, may be fairly left to individual consideration. What noble poetry, what spirited odes, what eloquent words, has not the world lost by the ignorance of the Greek and Roman touching this plant? The above remarks were made by Dick on this occasion. But Buttons was talking with the wounded Italians. The Doctor had bound up their wounds and Buttons had favored them with a drop from his flask. Dick cut up some tobacco and filled a pipe for each. After all, the Italians were not fiends. They had attacked them not from malice, but purely from professional motives. Yet, had their enemies been Tedeschi, no amount of attention would have overcome their sullen hate. But being Americans, gay, easy, without malice, in fact kind and rather agreeable, they softened, yielded altogether, and finally chatted familiarly with Buttons and Dick. They were young, not worse in appearance than the majority of men; perhaps not bad fellows in their social relations; at any rate, rather inclined to be jolly in their present circumstances. They were quite free in their expressions of admiration for the bravery of their captors, and looked with awe upon the Doctor's revolver, which was the first they had ever seen. In fact, the younger prisoner became quite communicative. Thus: