[169] Snuff-taking was prevalent among young women in our grandmothers’
time. Their flirts used to present them with pretty snuff-boxes. In one
of the monthly numbers of the _Scots Magazine_ for the year 1745 there
is a satirical poem by a swain upon the practice of snuff-taking; to
which a lady replies next month, defending the fashion as elegant and
of some account in coquetry. Almost all the old ladies who survived the
commencement of this century took snuff. Some kept it in pouches, and
abandoned, for its sake, the wearing of white ruffles and handkerchiefs.
[170] A gown then required ten yards of stuff.
[171] This verse appears in a manuscript subsequent to 1760. The name,
however, is Sleigh, not Lee. Mrs Mally Sleigh was married in 1725 to
the Lord Lyon Brodie of Brodie. Allan Ramsay celebrates her.