Snuff is a sort of freemasonry amongst those who partake of it.
Those who do not partake of it cannot possibly understand those who do. It
is just the same as music to the deaf--dancing to the lame--or painting to
the blind.
Snuff-takers will assure you that there are as many different types of
snuff-takers as there are different types of women in a church or in a
theatre, or different species of roses in the flower-bed of an
horticulturist.
But the section of snuff-takers has, in common with all social categories,
its apostates, its false brethren.
For as sure as you carry about with you a snuff-box, of copper, of
tortoise-shell, or of horn (the material matters absolutely nothing), you
cannot fail to have met upon your path the man who carries no snuff-box,
and yet is continually taking snuff.
The man who carries no snuff-box is an intimate nuisance--a hand-in-hand
annoyance--a sort of authorised Jeremy Diddler to all snuff-takers.
He meets you everywhere. The first question he puts is not how "you do?"
he assails you instantly with "Have you such a thing as a pinch of snuff
about you?"
It is absolutely as if he said, "I have no snuff myself, but I know _you_
have--and you cannot refuse me levying a small contribution upon it."
If it were only _one_ pinch; but it is two--it is four--it is eight; it is
all the week--all the month--it is all year round. The man who carries no
snuff box is a regular Captain Macheath--a licensed Paul Clifford--to
everyone that does. He meets you on the highway, and summonses you to stop
by demanding "Your snuff-box or your life?"
A man can easily refuse to his most intimate friend his purse, or his
razor, or his wife, or his horse; but with what decency can he refuse
him--or to his coolest acquaintance even--a pinch of snuff? It is in this
that the evil _pinches_.
The snuff-taker who carries no snuff-box is aware of this--and woe to the
box into which his fingers gain admission to levy the pinch his nose
distrains upon.
There is no man who has the trick so aptly at his fingers' ends of
absorbing so much in one given pinch, as the man who carries no snuff box.
The quantity he takes proves he is not given to _samples_.
Properly speaking he is the landlord of all the boxes in the kingdom.
Those who carry snuff-boxes are only his tenants; and hold them merely by
virtue of a _rack-rent_, under him.
He is a perpetual plunderer--a petty purloiner--a pinching petitioner _in
forma pauperis_--a contraband dealer in snuff. However, he is in general
noted for his social qualities. He is affable, mild, harmless,
insinuating, yielding, and submissive. He never fails to compliment you
upon your good looks, and wonders in deep interest where you buy such
excellent snuff. He agrees with you that Sir Peter Laurie is the first
statesman of the day, and flies into the highest ecstacies when he learns
that it is some of George the Fourth's sold-off stock. He even
acknowledges that Universal Suffrage is the only thing that can save the
nation, and affects to be quite astonished that he has left his box behind
him. He will beg to be remembered to your wife, and leaves you after
begging for "the favour of another pinch." Where is the man whose nature
would not be susceptible of a _pinch_ when invoked in the name of his
wife?
Goldsmith recommends a pair of boots, a silver pencil, or a horse of small
value, as an infallible specific for getting rid of a troublesome guest.
He always had the satisfaction to find he never came back to return them.
But with the man who carries no snuff-box this specific would lose its
infallibility. It would be folly to lend him your snuff-box, for at this
price snuff would lose all its flavour, all its perfume for him. The best
box to give him would be perhaps a box on the ear.
If he were obliged to buy his own snuff, it would give him no sensation.
The strongest would not make him sneeze, or wring from the sensibility of
his eyes the smallest tribute to its pungency. He would turn up his nose
at it, or, at the best, use it as sand-dust to receipt his washerwoman's
bills with.
These feelings aside, the man who carries no snuff-box is a good member of
society; that is to say, quite as good a one as the man who does carry a
snuff-box. He is in general a good friend (as long as he has the _entrée_
of your box), a good parent, a good tenant, a good customer, a good voter,
a good eater, a good talker, and especially a good judge of snuff. He
knows by one touch, by one sniff, by one _coup d'oeil_, the good from the
bad, the old from the new, the fragrant from the filthy, the colour which
is natural from the colour which is coloured. If any one should want to
lay in a stock of snuff, let him take the man who carries no snuff with
him: his _ipse dixit_ may be relied upon with every certainty. He will
choose it as if he were buying it for himself, and in return will never
forget to look upon it as a property he is entitled to fully as much as
you who have paid for it; for, in fact, would you be in possession of the
snuff if he had not chosen it for you?
As for his complaint, it is like hydrophilia; no remedy has as yet been
invented for it; and we can with comfortable consciences predict that, as
long as snuff is taken, and men continue to carry it about with them in
snuff-boxes, they are sure to be subject to the importunities of the man
who carries no snuff box.
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