As she more than hinted, the purpose of her life seemed to be taken from

her. She could not perceive that fact without some consternation; could

not instantly connect it with another, which should enable her to look

around her with the deliberation of a liberated spirit, choosing her new

work. And in this she was acted upon by more than the fear arising from

the influences of her old belief. Of course she should have been, and

yet she was not, able to drop instantly and forever from recollection

the constant sacrifices she had made, the deprivation she had endured,

with heroic persistence,--the putting far away every personal

indulgence whose price had a market value. Her father was not the only

person concerned in this work; the priest; herself. She had believed

in the pastor of Domrémy. Yet he had deceived her. Else he was

self-deceived; and what if the blind should strive to lead the blind?

_Could_ she accept the new faith, the great freedom, with perfect

rejoicing?

Victor Le Roy seemed to have some suspicion of what was passing in

her thoughts. He did not need to watch her changeful face in order to

understand them.

"I advise you to still think of this," said he. "Recall your father's

life, and then ask yourself if it is likely that He who is Love requires

the sacrifice of your youth and your strength before your father shall

receive from Him what He has promised to give to all who trust in Him.

Take God at his word, and you will be obliged to give up all this

priest-trash."

IV.

Victor Le Roy spoke these words quietly, as if aware that he might

safely leave them, as well as any other true words, to the just sense of

Jacqueline.

She was none the happier for them when she returned that night to the

little city room, the poor lodging whose high window overlooked both

town and country, city streets and harvest-fields, and the river flowing

on beyond the borders of the town,--no happier through many a moment of

thinking, until, as it were by an instant illumination, she began to

see the truth of the matter, as some might wonder she did not instantly

perceive it, if they could omit from observation this leading fact, that

the orphan girl was Jacqueline Gabrie, child of the Church, and not

a wise and generous person, who had never been in bondage to

superstitions.

For a long time after her return to her lodging she was alone. Elsie was

in the street with the rest of the town, talking, as all were talking,

of the sight that Meaux should see to-morrow.

Besides Jacqueline, there was hardly another person in this great

building, six stories high, every room of which had usually a tenant at

this hour. She sat by her window, and looked at the dusky town, over

which the moon was rising. But her thoughts were far away; over many a

league they wandered.

Once more she stood on the playground of her toilsome childhood. She

recalled many a year of sacrificing drudgery, which now she could not

name such,--for another reason than that which had heretofore prevented

her from calling it a sacrifice. She remembered these years of wrong and

of extortion,--they received their proper name now,--years whose mirth

and leisure she had quietly foregone, but during which she had borne a

burden that saddened youth, while it also dignified it,--a burden which

had made her heart's natural cheerfulness the subject of self-reproach,

and her maiden dreams and wishes matter for tears, for shame, for

confession, for prayer.

Now Victor Le Roy's words came to her very strangely; powerfully they

moved her. She believed them in this solitude, where at leisure she

could meditate upon them. A vision more fair and blessed than she had

ever imagined rose before her. There was no suffering in it, and no

sorrow; it was full of peace. Already, in the heaven to which she had

hoped her toil would give him at length admission, her father had found

his home. There was a glory in his rest not reflected from her filial

love, but from the all-availing love of Christ.

Then--delay the rigor of your judgment!--she began,--yes, she, this

Jacqueline, began to count the cost of what she had done. She was not a

sordid soul, she had not a miserly nature. Before she had gone far in

that strange computation, she paused abruptly, with a crimsoned face,

and not with tearless eyes. Counting the cost! Estimating the sacrifice!

Had, then, her purpose been less holy because excited by falsehood and

sustained through delusion? Was she less loving and less true, because

deceived? And was she to lament that Christ, the one and only Priest,

rather than another instrumentality, was the deliverer of her beloved

from the power of death?

No ritual was remembered, and no formula consulted, when she cried

out,--"It is so! and I thank Thee! Only give me now, my Jesus, a

purpose as holy as that Thou hast taken away!"

But she had not come into her chamber to spend a solitary evening there.

Turning away from the window, she bestowed a little care upon her

person, smoothed away the traces of her day's labor, and after all was

done she lingered yet longer. She was going out, evidently. Whither? To

visit the mother of John Leclerc. She must carry back the tracts the

good woman had lent her. Their contents had firm lodgement in her

memory.

Others might run to and fro in the streets, and talk about the corners,

and prognosticate with passion, and defy, in the way of cowardice, where

safety rather than the truth is well assured. If one woman could console

another, Jacqueline wished that she might console Leclerc's mother. And

if any words of wisdom could drop from the poor old woman's lips while

her soul was in this strait, Jacqueline desired to hear those words.

Down the many flights of stairs she went across the court, and then

along the street, to the house where the wool-comber lived.

A brief pause followed her knock for admittance. She repeated it. Then

was heard a sound from within,--a step crossing the floor. The door

opened, and there stood the mother of Leclerc, ready to face any danger,

the very Fiend himself.

But when she saw that it was Jacqueline, only Jacqueline,--an angel, as

one might say, and not a devil,--the terrible look passed from her face;

she opened the door wide.

"Come in, child! come in!"

So Jacqueline went into the room where John had worked and thought,

reasoned, argued, prayed.

This is the home of the man because of whom many are this night offended

in the city of Meaux. This is the place whence issued the power that has

set the tongues to talking, and the minds to thinking, and the hearts to

hoping, and the authorities to avenging.

A grain of mustard-seed is the kingdom of heaven in a figure; the

wandering winds a symbol of the Pentecostal power: a dove did signify

the descent of God to man. This poor chamber, so pent in, and so lowly,

so obscure, has its significance. Here has a life been lived; and not

the least does it import, that walls are rough and the ceiling low.

But the life of John Leclerc was not to be limited. A power has stood

here which by its freedom has set at defiance the customary calculation

of the worldly-wise. In high places and in low the people are this night

disturbed because of him who has dared to lift his voice in the freedom

of the speech of God. In drawing-rooms odorous with luxury the man's

name has mention, and the vulgarity of his liberated speech and

courageous faith is a theme to move the wonder and excite the

reprobation of hearts whose languid beating keeps up their show of life,

--to what sufficient purpose expect me not to tell. His voice is loud

and harsh to echo through these music-loving halls; it rends and tears,

with almost savage strength, the dainty silences.

But busier tongues are elsewhere more vehement in speech; larger

hearts beat faster indignation; grief and vulgarest curiosity are all

manifesting themselves after their several necessity. In solitary places

heroes pray throughout the night, wrestling like Jacob, agonizing like

Saul, and with some of them the angel left his blessing; for some the

golden harp was struck that soothed their souls to peace. Angels of

heaven had work to do that night. Angels of heaven and hell did prove

themselves that night in Meaux: night of unrest and sleeplessness, or of

cruel dreaming; night of bloody visions, tortured by the apprehension

of a lacerated body driven through the city streets, and of the hooting

shouts of Devildom; night haunted by a gory image,--the defiled temple

of the Holy Ghost.

Did the prospect of torture keep _him_ wakeful? Could the man bear the

disgrace, the derision, shouting, agony? Was there nothing in this

thought, that as a witness of Jesus Christ he was to appear next day,

that should soothe him even unto slumber? Upon the silence of his

guarded chamber let none but ministering angels break. Sacred to him,

and to Him who watched the hours of the night, let the night go!

But here--his mother, Jacqueline with her--we may linger with these.

V.

When the old woman saw that it was Jacqueline Gabrie who stood waiting

admittance, she opened the door wider, as I said; and the dark solemnity

of her countenance seemed to be, by so much as a single ray, enlivened

for an instant.

She at once perceived the tracts which Jacqueline had brought. Aware of

this, the girl said,--

"I stayed to hear them read, after I heard that for the sake of the

truth in them"--she hesitated--"this city will invite God's wrath

to-morrow."

And she gave the papers to the old woman, who took them in silence.

By-and-by she asked,--

"Are you just home, Jacqueline?"

"Since sunset,--though it was nearly dark when I came in,"--she

answered. "Victor Le Roy was down by the riverbank, and he read them for

me."

"He wanted to get out of town, maybe. You would surely have thought it

was a holiday, Jacqueline, if you could have seen the people. Anything

for a show: but some of them might well lament. Did you want to know the

truth he pays so dear for teaching? But you have heard it, my child."

"We all heard what he must pay for it, in the fields at noon. Yes,

mother, I wanted to know."

"But if you shall believe it, Jacqueline, it may lead you into danger,

into sad straits," said the old woman, looking at the young girl with

earnest pity in her eyes.

She loved this girl, and shuddered at the thought of exposing her to

danger.

Jacqueline had nursed her neighbor, Antonine, and more than once, after

a hard day's labor, which must be followed by another, she had sat with

her through the night; and she could pay this service only with love,

and the best gift of her love was to instruct her in the truth. John and

she had proved their grateful interest in her fortunes by giving her

that which might expose her to danger, persecution, and they could not

foresee to what extremity of evil.

And now the old woman felt constrained to say this to her, even for her

love's sake,--"It may lead you into danger."

"But if truth is dangerous, shall I choose to be safe?" answered

Jacqueline, with stately courage.

"It _is_ truth. It _will_ support him. Blessed be Jesus Christ and His

witnesses! To-night, and to-morrow, and the third day, our Jesus will

sustain him. They think John will retract. They do not know my son. They

do not know how he has waited, prayed, and studied to learn the truth,

and how dear it is to him. No, Jacqueline, they do not. But when they

prove him, they will know. And if he is willing to witness, shall I

not be glad? The people will understand him better afterward,--and the

priests, maybe. 'I can do all things,' said he, 'Christ strengthening

me'; and that was said long ago, by one who was proved. Where shall you

be, Jacqueline?"

"Oh," groaned Jacqueline, "I shall be in the fields at work, away from

these cruel people, and the noise and the sight. But, mother, where

shall you be?"

"With the people, child. With him, if I live. Yes, he is my son; and

I have never been ashamed of the brave boy. I will not be ashamed

to-morrow. I will follow John; and when they bind him, I will let him

see his mother's eyes are on him,--blessing him, my child!--Hark! how

they talk through the streets!--Jacqueline, he was never a coward. He

is strong, too. They will not kill him, and they cannot make him dumb.

He will hold the truth the faster for all they do to him. Jesus Christ

on his side, do you think he will fear the city, or all Paris, or all

France? He does not know what it is to be afraid. And when God opened

his eyes to the truth of his gospel, which the priests had hid, he meant

that John should work for it,--for he is a working-man, whatever he sets

about."

So this old woman tried, and not without success, to comfort herself,

and sustain her tender, proud, maternal heart. The dire extremity into

which she and her son had fallen did not crush her; few were the tears

that fell from her eyes as she recalled for Jacqueline the years of her

son's boyhood,--told her of his courage, as in various ways it had made

itself manifest: how he had always been fearless in danger,--a

conqueror of pain,--seemingly regardless of comfort,--fond of

contemplation,--contented with his humble state,--kindly, affectionate,

generous, but easily stirred to wrath by injustice, when manifested by

the strong toward the weak,--or by cruelty, or by falsehood.

Many an anecdote of his career might she relate; for his character,

under the pressure of this trial, which was as searching and severe a

test of her faith as of his, seemed to illustrate itself in manifold

heroic ways, all now of the highest significance. With more majesty and

grandeur his character arose before her; for now in all the past, as she

surveyed it, she beheld a living power, a capability, and a necessity of

new and grand significance, and her heart reverenced the spirit she had

nursed into being.

Removed to the distance of a prison from her sight, separated from

her love by bolts and bars, and the wrath of tyranny and close-banded

bigotry, he became a power, a hero, who moved her, as she recalled

his sentence, and prophesied the morrow, to a feeling tears could not

explain.

They passed the night together, the young woman and the old. In the

morning Jacqueline must go into the field again. She was in haste to go.

Leaving a kiss on the old woman's cheek, she was about to steal away in

silence; but as she laid her hand upon the latch, a thought arrested

her, and she did not open the door, but went back and sat beside the

window, and watched the mother of Leclerc through the sleep that must be

brief. It was not in her heart to go away and leave those eyes to waken

upon solitude. She must see a helpful hand and hopeful face, and, if it

might be, hear a cheerful human voice, in the dawning of that day.

She had not long to wait, and the time she may have lost in waiting

Jacqueline did not count or reckon, when she heard her name spoken, and

could answer, "What wilt thou? here am I."

Not in vain had she lingered. What were wages, more or less, that they

should be mentioned, thought of, when she might give and receive here

what the world gives not, and never has to give,--and what a mortal

cannot buy, the treasure being priceless? Through the quiet of that

morning hour, soothing words, and strong, she felt and knew to speak;

and when at last she hurried away from the city to the fields, she was

stronger than of nature, able to bear witness to the faith that speaks

from the bewilderment of its distresses, "Though He slay me, yet will I

trust in Him."

Not alone had her young, frank, loving eyes enlivened the dreary morning

to the heart of Leclerc's mother. Grace for grace had she received. And

words of the hymn that were always on John's lips had found echo

from his mother's memory this morning: they lodged in the heart of

Jacqueline. She went away repeating,--

"In the midst of death, the jaws

Of hell against us gape.

Who from peril dire as this

Openeth us escape?

'Tis thou, O Lord, alone!

Our bitter suffering and our sin

Pity from thy mercy win,

Holy Lord and God!

Strong and holy God!

Merciful and holy Saviour!

Eternal God!

Let us not despair

For the fire that burneth there!

Kyrie, eleison!"

Jacqueline met Elsie on her way to the fields. But the girls had

not much to say to each other that morning in their walk. Elsie was

manifestly conscious of some great constraint; she might have reported

to her friend what she had heard in the streets last night, but she

felt herself prevented from such communication,--seemed to be intent

principally on one thing: she would not commit herself in any direction.

She was looking with suspicion upon Jacqueline. Whatever became of her

soul, her body she would save alive. She was waking to this world's

enjoyment with vision alert, senses keen. Martyrdom in any degree was

without attraction to her, and in Truth she saw no beauty that she

should desire it. It was a root out of dry ground indeed, that gave no

promise of spreading into goodly shelter and entrancing beauty.

As to Jacqueline, she was absorbed in her heroic and exalted thoughts.

Her heart had almost failed her when she said farewell to John's mother;

tearfully she had hurried on her way. One vast cloud hung between her

and heaven; darkly rolled the river; every face seemed to bear witness

to the tragedy that day should witness.

Not the least of her affliction was the consciousness of the distance

increasing between herself and Elsie Méril. She knew that Elsie was

rejoicing that she had in no way endangered herself yet; and sure was

she that in no way would Elsie invite the fury of avenging tyranny and

reckless superstition.

Jacqueline asked her no questions,--spoke few words to her,--was

absorbed in her own thoughts. But she was kindly in her manner, and

in such words as she spoke. So Elsie perceived two things,--that she

should not lose her friend, neither was in danger of being seized by the

heretical mania. It was her way of drawing inferences. Certain that

she had not lost her friend, because Jacqueline did not look away, and

refuse to recognize her; congratulating herself that she was not the

object of suspicion, either justly or unjustly, among the dreadful

priests.

But that friend whose steady eye had balanced Elsie was already sick at

heart, for she knew that never more must she rely upon this girl who

came with her from Domrémy.

As they crossed the bridge, lingering thereon a moment, the river seemed

to moan in its flowing toward Meaux. The day's light was sombre; the

birds' songs had no joyous sound,--plaintive was their chirping; it

saddened the heart to hear the wind,--it was a wind that seemed to take

the buoyancy and freshness out of every living thing, an ugly southeast

wind. They went on together,--to the wheat-fields together;--it was to

be day of minutes to poor Jacqueline.

To be away from Meaux bodily was, it appeared, only that the imagination

might have freer exercise. Yes,--now the people must be moving through

the streets; shopmen were not so intent on profits this day as they were

on other days. The priests were thinking with vengeful hate of the wrong

to themselves which should be met and conquered that day. The people

should be swiftly brought into order again! John in his prison was

preparing, as all without the prison were.

The crowd was gathering fast. He would soon be led forth. The shameful

march was forming. Now the brutal hand of Power was lifted with

scourges. The bravest man in Meaux was driven through the streets,--she

saw with what a visage,--she knew with what a heart. Her heart was awed

with thinking thereupon. A bloody mist seemed to fall upon the environs

of Meaux; through that red horror she could not penetrate; it shrouded

and it held poor Jacqueline.

Of the faith that would sustain him she began once more to inquire. It

is not by a bound that mortals ever clear the heights of God. Step by

step they scale the eminences, toiling through the heavenly atmosphere.

Only around the summit shines the eternal sun.

So she must now recall the words that Victor Le Roy read for her last

night; and the words he spoke from out his heart,--these also. And

she did not fear now, as yesterday, to ask for light. Let the light

dawn,--oh, let it shine on her!

The mother of Leclerc had uttered mysterious words which Jacqueline took

for truth; the light was joyful and blessed, and of all things to be

desired, though it smote the life from one like lightning. She waited

alone with faith, watching till it should come,--left alone with this

beam glimmering like a moth through darkness!--for thus was a believer,

or one who resolved on believing, left in that day, when he turned from

the machinery of the Church, and stood alone, searching for God without

the aid of priestly intervention.

VI.

There was something awful in such loneliness.

Jacqueline knew little of it until now, as she walked toward the fields,

by the side of Elsie Méril.

She saw how she had depended on the priest of Domrémy, as he had been

the lawgiver and the leader of her life. A spiritual life, to be

sustained only by the invisible spirit, to be lived by faith, not in

man, but in God, without intervention of saint or angel or Blessed

Virgin,--was the world's life liberated by such freedom?

By faith, and not by sight, the just must live. Would He bow his heavens

and come down to dwell with the contrite and the humble?

Wondrous strange it seemed,--incomprehensible,--more than she could

manage or control. There are prisoners whose pardon proves the world too

large for them: they find no rest until their prison-door is opened for

them again.

Of this class was Elsie,--not Jacqueline. Elsie was afraid of

freedom,--not equal to it,--unable to deal with it; satisfied with being

a child, with being a slave, when it came to be a question whether she

should accept and use her highest privilege and dignity. At this hour,

and among all persuasions, you will find that Elsie does not stand

alone. Little children there are, long as the world shall stand,--though

not precisely such as we think of when we remember, "Of such is the

kingdom of heaven."

It was enough for Elsie--it is enough for multitudes through all the

reformations--that she had an earthly defence, even such as she relied

on without trouble. She lived in the hour. She had never toiled to

deliver her darling from the lions,--to redeem a soul from purgatory.

She eased her conscience, when it was troubled, by such shallow

discovery of herself as she deemed confession. She loved dancing,

and all other amusements,--hated solitude, knew not the meaning of

self-abnegation. And let her dance and enjoy herself!--some service

to the body is rendered thereby. She might do greatly worse, and

is incapable of doing greatly better. Will you stint the idiots of

comfort,--or rather build them decent habitations, and even vex yourself

to feed and clothe them, in reverent confidence that the Future shall

surely take them up and bless them, unstop their ears, open their eyes,

give speech to them and absolute deliverance?

There are others beside Elsie who congratulate themselves on

non-committal,--they covet not the advanced and dangerous positions.

Honorable, but dangerous positions! The head might be taken off, do you

not see? And could all eternity compensate for the loss of time? Ah, the

body might be mutilated,--the liberty restrained: as if, indeed, a

man's freedom were not eternally established, when his enemies, howling

around, must at least crucify him! as if a divine voice were not ever

heard through the raging of the people, saying, "Come up higher!"

But a fern-leaf cannot grow into a mighty hemlock-tree. From the ashes

of a sparrow the phoenix shall not rise. You will not to all eternity,

by any artificial means, nor by a miracle, bring forth an eagle from a

mollusk.

There was not a sadder heart in all those fields of Meaux than the heart

of Jacqueline Gabrie. There was not a stronger heart. Not a hand

labored more diligently. Under the broad-brimmed peasant-hat was a sad

countenance,--under the peasant-dress a heavily burdened spirit. Silent,

all day, she labored. She was alone at noon under the river-bordered

trees, eating her coarse fare without zest, but with a conscience,--to

sustain the body that was born to toil. But in the maelström of doubt

and anxiety was she tossed and whirled, and she cared not for her life.

To be rid of it, now for the first time, she felt might be a blessing.

What purpose, indeed, had she? She turned her thought from this

question, but it would not let her alone. Again and yet again she turned

to meet it, and thus would surely have at length its satisfying answer.

John Leclerc might pass through this ordeal, as from the first she

had expected of him. But she listened to the speech of many of her

fellow-laborers. Some prophecies which had a sound incredible escaped

them. She did not credit them, but they tormented her. They contended

with one another. John, some foretold, would certainly retract. One day

of public whipping would suffice. When the blood began to flow, he would

see his duty clearer! The men were prophesying from the depths and the

abundance of their self-consciousness. Others speculated on the final

result of the executed sentence. They believed that the "obstinacy" and

courage of the man would provoke his judges, and the executors of his

sentence,--that with rigor they would execute it,--and that, led on

by passion, and provoked by such as would side with the victim, the

sentence would terminate in his destruction. Sooner or later, nothing

but his life would be found ultimately to satisfy his enemies.

It might be so, thought Jacqueline Gabrie. What then? what then?--she

thought. There was inspiration to the girl in that cruel prophecy. Her

lifework was not ended. If Christ was the One Ransom, and it did truly

fall on Him, and not on her, to care for those beloved, departed from

this life, her work was still for love.

John Leclerc disabled or dead, who should care then for his aged mother?

Who should minister to him? Who, indeed, but Jacqueline?

Living or dying, she said to herself, with grand enthusiasm,--living or

dying, let him do the Master's pleasure! She also was here to serve that

Master; and while in spiritual things he fed the hungry, clothed the

naked, gave the cup of living water, visited the imprisoned, and the

sick of sin, she would bind herself to minister to him and his old

mother in temporal things; so should he live above all cares save those

of heavenly love. She could support them all by her diligence, and in

this there would be joy.

She thought this through her toil; and the thought was its own reward.

It strengthened her like an angel,--strengthened heart and faith. She

labored as no other peasant-woman did that day,--like a beast of burden,

unresisting, patient,--like a holy saint, so peaceful and assured, so

conscious of the present very God!

[To be continued.]

* * * * *

MIDSUMMER.

Around this lovely valley rise

The purple hills of Paradise.

Oh, softly on yon banks of haze

Her rosy face the Summer lays!

Becalmed along the azure sky,

The argosies of cloudland lie,

Whose shores, with many a shining rift,

Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift.

Through all the long midsummer-day

The meadow-sides are sweet with hay.

I seek the coolest sheltered seat

Just where the field and forest meet,--

Where grow the pine-trees tall and bland,

The ancient oaks austere and grand,

And fringy roots and pebbles fret

The ripples of the rivulet.

I watch, the mowers as they go

Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row;

With even stroke their scythes they swing,

In tune their merry whetstones ring;

Behind the nimble youngsters run

And toss the thick swaths in the sun;

The cattle graze; while, warm and still,

Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill,

And bright, when summer breezes break,

The green wheat crinkles like a lake.

The butterfly and humble-bee

Come to the pleasant woods with me;

Quickly before me runs the quail,

The chickens skulk behind the rail,

High up the lone wood-pigeon sits,

And the woodpecker pecks and flits.

Sweet woodland music sinks and swells,

The brooklet rings its tinkling bells,

The swarming insects drone and hum,

The partridge beats his throbbing drum.

The squirrel leaps among the boughs,

And chatters in his leafy house.

The oriole flashes by; and, look!

Into the mirror of the brook,

Where the vain blue-bird trims his coat,

Two tiny feathers fall and float.

As silently, as tenderly,

The down of peace descends on me.

Oh, this is peace! I have no need

Of friend to talk, of book to read:

A dear Companion here abides;

Close to my thrilling heart He hides;

The holy silence is His Voice:

I lie and listen, and rejoice.

TOBACCO.

"Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all

the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy

to all diseases! a good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb, if it be well

qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used. But as it is commonly

abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a

mischief, a violent purger of goods, lauds, health: hellish, devilish, and

damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul!"--BURTON. _Anatomy

of Melancholy_.

A delicate subject? Very true; and one which must be handled as tenderly

as _biscuit de Sèvres_, or Venetian glass. Whichever side of the

question we may assume, as the most popular, or the most right, the

feelings of so large and respectable a minority are to be consulted,

that it behooves the critic or reviewer to move cautiously, and,

imitating the actions of a certain feline household reformer, to show

only the _patte de velours_.

The omniscient Burton seems to have reached the pith of the matter. The

two hostile sections of his proposition, though written so long since,

would very well fit the smoker and the reformer of to-day. That portion

of the world which is enough advanced to advocate reforms is entirely

divided against itself on the subject of Tobacco. Immense interests,

economical, social, and, as some conceive, moral, are arrayed on either

side. The reformers have hitherto had the better of it in point of

argument, and have pushed the attack with most vigor, yet with but

trifling results. Smokers and chewers, _et id omne genus_, mollified

by their habits, or laboring under guilty consciences, have made but a

feeble defence. Nor in all this is there anything new. It is as old as

the knowledge of the "weed" among thinking men,--in other words, about

three centuries. The English adventurers under Drake and Raleigh and

Hawkins, and the multitude of minor Protestant "filibusters" who

followed in their train, had no sooner imported the habit of smoking

tobacco, among the other outlandish customs which they brought home from

the new Indies and the Spanish Main, than the higher powers rebuked

the practice, which novelty and its own fascinations were rendering so

fashionable, in language more forcible than elegant. The philippic of

King James is so apposite that we may be pardoned for transcribing one

oft-quoted sentence:--"But herein is not only a great vanity, but a

great contempt of God's good gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath,

being a good gift of God, should be wilfully corrupted by this stinking

smoke.... A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmfull

to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume

thereof neerest resembling the horrible Stygian smoake of the pit that

is bottomless."[a]

[Footnote a: _Counterblast to Tobacco_.]

The Popes Urban VIII. and Innocent XII. fulminated edicts of

excommunication against all who used tobacco in any form; from which we

may conclude that the new habit was spreading rapidly over Christendom.

And not only the successors of St. Peter, but those also of the Prophet,

denounced the practice, the Sultan Amurath IV. making it punishable with

death. The Viziers of Turkey spitted the noses of smokers with their own

pipes; the more considerate Shah of Persia cut them entirely off. The

knout greeted in Russia the first indulgence, and death followed the

second offence. In some of the Swiss cantons smoking was considered a

crime second only to adultery. Modern republics are not quite so severe.

It is not to be supposed that in England the royal pamphlet had its

desired effect. For we find that James laid many rigid sumptuary

restrictions upon the practice which he abominated, based chiefly upon

the extravagance it occasioned,--the expenses of some smokers being

estimated at several hundred pounds a year. The King, however, had the

sagacity to secure a preëmption-right as early as 1620.

Yet how could the practice but have increased, when, as Malcolm relates

the tradition, such men as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Hugh Middleton

sat smoking at their doors?--for "the public manner in which it was

exhibited, and the aromatic flavor inhaled by the passengers, exclusive

of the singularity of the circumstance and the eminence of the parties,"

could hardly have failed to favor its dissemination.

The silver-tongued Joshua Sylvester hoped to aid the royal cause by

writing a poem entitled, "Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered,

(about their ears who idly idolize so base and barbarous a weed, or at

least-wise overlove so loathsome a vanity,) by a volley of holy shot

thundered from Mount Helicon." If the smoothness of the verses equalled

the euphony of the title, this must have proved a moving appeal.

Stow contents himself with calling tobacco "a stinking weed, so much

abused to God's dishonor."

Burton exhausts the subject in a single paragraph. Ben Jonson, though

a jolly good fellow, was opposed to the habit of smoking. But Spenser

mentions "divine tobacco." Walton's "Piscator" indulges in a pipe at

breakfast, and "Venator" has his tobacco brought from London to insure

its purity. Sweet Izaak could have selected no more soothing minister

than the pipe to the "contemplative man's recreation."

As the new sedative gains in esteem, we find Francis Quarles, in his

"Emblems," treating it in this serio-comic vein:--

"Flint-hearted Stoics, you whose marble eyes

Contemn a wrinkle, and whose souls despise

To follow Nature's too affected fashion,

Or travel in the regent walk of passion,--

Whose rigid hearts disdain to shrink at

fears,

Or play at fast-and-loose with smiles and

tears,--

Come, burst your spleens with laughter to

behold

A new-found vanity, which days of old

Ne'er knew,--a vanity that has beset

The world, and made more slaves than Mahomet,--

That has condemned us to the servile yoke

Of slavery, and made us slaves to smoke,

But stay! why tax I thus our modern

times

For new-born follies and for new-born

crimes?

Are we sole guilty, and the first age free?

No: they were smoked and slaved as well

as we.

What's sweet-lipped honor's blast, but

smoke? what's treasure,

But very smoke? and what's more smoke

than pleasure?"

Brand gives us the whole matter in a nutshell, in the following quaint

epigram, entitled "A Tobacconist," taken from an old collection:--

"All dainty meats I do defy

Which feed men fat as swine;

He is a frugal man, indeed,

That on a leaf can dine.

"He needs no napkin for his hands

His fingers' ends to wipe,

That keeps his kitchen in a box,

And roast meat in a pipe."

And so on, the singers of succeeding years, _usque ad nauseam_,--a

loathing equalled only by that of the earlier writers for the plant, now

so lauded.

Tobacco-worship seems to us to culminate in the following stanza from a

German song:--

"Tabak ist mein Leben,

Dem hab' ich mich ergeben, ergeben;

Tabak ist meine Lust.

Und eh' ich ihn sollt' lassen,

Viel lieber wollt' ich hassen,

Ja, hassen selbst eines Mädchens Kuss."

As it is with your sex, my dear Madam, that this question of Tobacco is

to be mainly argued,--for, to your honor be it spoken, you have always

been of the reformatory party,--let us hope, that, provided you have

not read or translated the last verse, you have recovered your natural

amiability, ruffled perhaps by this odious subject, and are prepared

to believe us when we tell you that these opposite opinions cannot be

wholly reconciled, and to follow us patiently while we attempt to show

that a certain gentleman, introduced to your maternal ancestor at a very

remote period of the world's history, is not so black as he is sometimes

painted. Let us keep good-natured, at least, in this discussion; for we

propose to settle it without taking off the gloves, as we intimated in

the opening paragraph. Your patience will be much needed for the sad

army of facts and figures which is to follow. Therefore it is but just

that you should speak now, after these long sentences.

Your George will never smoke? Excuse me. _When_ he will smoke depends

upon the precocity of his individual generation; and that increases in

a direct ratio with time itself, in this country. Thus, to state the

matter in an approximate inverse arithmetical progression, and dating

the birth of "young America" about the year 1825,--previously to which

reigned the dark ages of oldfogydom, so called,--we find as follows:

--From 1825 to 1835, young gentlemen learned to smoke when from 25 to 20

years of age; from 1835 to 1845, young _gents_, ditto, ditto, from 20 to

15 years; 1845 to 1855, from 15 to 10; 1855 to 1865, 10 to 5; 1865 to

1875, 5 to 0; and, if we continue, 1875 to 1885, zero to minus: but

really the question is becoming too nebulous. _Corollary_. In about ten

years, the youth of the United States will smoke contemporaneously with

the infant Burmese, who, we are credibly informed, begin the habit

_aet_. 3, or as soon as they have cut enough teeth to hold a cigar.

Therefore, we will say, Madam, at some indefinite period of his

childhood or youth,--for we would not be so impolite as to infer your

age by asking that of your son,--the _susdit_ George will come home

late from play some afternoon, languid, pale, and disinclined for tea.

He will indignantly repel the accusation of feeling ill, and there will

lurk about his person an indescribable odor of stale cinnamon, which

you will be at a loss to account for, but which his elder brother will

recognize as the natural result of smoking "cinnamon cigars," wherewith

certain wicked tobacconists of this city tempt curious youth. If you

follow him to his chamber, you will probably discover more damning

evidence of his guilt.

We will draw the curtain over the scene of the Spartan mother--we hope

you belong to that nearly extinct class--which is to follow. Let us

suppose all differences settled, the habit ostensibly given up, and your

darling, grown more honest or more artful,--the result is the same to

your blissful ignorance,--studiously pursuing his way until he enters

college. Some fine day you drive over to the neighboring university,

and, entering his room unannounced, you find him coloring his first

(factitious) meerschaum!--also a sad deficiency in his wardrobe of

half-worn clothes. _C'est une pipe qui coûte cher à culotter_, the

college meerschaum,--and in more ways than one, according to the

"Autocrat":--"I do not advise you, young man, to consecrate the flower

of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe," _et seq_. More bold,

the Sophomore will smoke openly at home; and by the end of the third

vacation, it is one of those unyielding _faits accomplis_ against which

reformers, household or peripatetic, beat their heads in vain.

Perhaps your husband smokes? If so, at what period of the twenty-four

hours have you invariably found Mr. ---- most lenient to your little

pecuniary peccadilloes? Is he not always most good-natured when his

cigar is about one-third consumed, the ash evenly burnt and adherent,

and not fallen into his shirt-bosom? Depend upon it, tobacco is a great

soother of domestic differences.

Let us, then, look an existing, firmly rooted evil--if you will call it

so--in the face, and see if it is quite so bad as it is represented. It

is too wide-spread to be sneered away,--for we might almost say that

smokers were the rule, and non-smokers the exception, among all

civilized men, Charles Kingsley supports us here:--"'Man a cooking

animal,' my dear Doctor Johnson? Pooh! man is a _smoking_ animal.

There is his _ergon_, his 'differential energy,' as the Aristotelians

say,--his true distinction from the orangoutang. Ponder it well."

_Query_.--What did the old Roman do without a cigar? How idle through

the day? How survive his interminable _post-coenal_ potations?--The

thought is not our own. It occurs somewhere in De Quincey, we believe.

It is one of those self-evident propositions you wonder had not occurred

to you before.--What an accessory of luxury the pipe would have been

to him who passed the livelong day under the mosaic arches of the

_Thermoe_! The _strigiles_ would have vanished before the meerschaum,

had that magic clay then been known. How completely would the _hookah_

and the _narghileh_ have harmonized with the _crater, cyathi_, and

tripods of the _triclinium_ in that portraiture of the "Decadence of

Rome" which hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery! Poor fellows! they managed

to exist without them.

Though pipes are found carved on very old sculptures in China, and the

habit of smoking was long since extensively followed there, according

to Pallas, and although certain species of the tobacco-plant, as the

_Nicotiana rustica_, would appear to be indigenous to the country, yet

we have the best reason to conclude that America, if not the exclusive

home of the herb, was the birthplace of its use by man. The first great

explorer of the West found the sensuous natives of Hispaniola rolling up

and smoking tobacco-leaves with the same persistent indolence that

we recognize in the Cuban of the present day. Rough Cortés saw with

surprise the luxurious Aztec composing himself for the _siesta_ in the

middle of the day as invariably as his fellow Dons in Castile. But he

was amazed that the barbarians had discovered in tobacco a sedative

to promote their reveries and compose them to sleep, of which the

_hidalgos_ were as yet ignorant, but which they were soon to appropriate

with avidity, and to use with equal zest. Humboldt says that it had been

cultivated by the people of Orinoco from time immemorial, and was smoked

all over America at the time of the Spanish Conquest,--also that it was

first discovered by Europeans in Yucatan, in 1520, and was there called

_Petum_. Tobacco, according to the same authority, was taken from the

word _tabac_, the name of an instrument used in the preparation of the

herb.

Though Columbus and his immediate followers doubtless brought home

specimens of tobacco among the other spoils of the New World, Jean

Nicot, ambassador to Portugal from Francis II., first sent the seeds

to France, where they were cultivated and used about the year 1560. In

honor of its sponsor, Botany has named the plant _Nicotiana tabacum_,

and Chemistry distinguished as _Nicotin_ its active alkaloid. Sir

Francis Drake first brought tobacco to England about 1586. It owed

the greater part of its early popularity, however, to the praise and

practice of Raleigh: his high standing and character would have sufficed

to introduce still more novel customs. The weed once inhaled, the habit

once acquired, its seductions would not allow it to be easily laid

aside; and we accordingly find that royal satire, public odium, and

ruinous cost were alike inadequate to restrain its rapidly increasing

consumption. Somewhere about the year 1600 or 1601 tobacco was carried

to the East, and introduced among the Turks and Persians,--it is not

known by whom: the devotion of modern Mussulmans might reasonably

ascribe it to Allah himself. It seems almost incredible that the

Oriental type of life and character could have existed without tobacco.

The pipe seems as inseparable as the Koran from the follower of Mahomet.

Barely three centuries ago, then, the first seeds of the _Nicotiana

tabacum_ germinated in European soil: now, who shall count the harvests?

Less than three centuries ago, Raleigh attracted a crowd by sitting

smoking at his door: now, the humblest bog-trotter of Ireland must

be poor indeed who cannot own or borrow a pipe. A little more than a

century and a half ago, the import into Great Britain was only one

hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and part of that was reëxported:

now, the imports reach thirty million pounds, and furnish to government

a revenue of twenty millions of dollars,--being an annual tax of three

shillings four pence on every soul in the United Kingdom. Nor is the

case of England an exceptional one. The tobacco-zone girdles the globe.

From the equator, through fifty degrees of latitude, it grows and is

consumed on every continent. On every sea it is carried and used by the

mariners of every nation. Its incense rises in every clime, as from one

vast altar dedicated to its worship,--before which ancient holocausts,

the smoke of burnt-offerings in the old Jewish rites, the censers of the

Church, and the joss-sticks of the East, must "pale their ineffectual

fires." All classes, all ages, in all climates, and in some countries

both sexes, use tobacco to dispel heat, to resist cold, to soothe

to reverie, or to arouse the brain, according to their national

habitations, peculiarities, or habits.

This is not the language of hyperbole. With a partial exception in favor

of the hop, tobacco is the _sole recognized narcotic_ of civilization.

Opium and hemp, if indulged in, are concealed, by the Western nations:

public opinion, public morality, are at war with them. Not so with

tobacco, which the majority of civilized men use, and the minority

rather deprecate than denounce. We shall avail ourselves of some

statistics and computations, which we find ready-calculated, at various

sources, to support these assertions. The following are the amounts of

tobacco consumed _per head_ in various countries:--

"In Great Britain, 17 ounces per head; in France, 18 1/2

ounces,--three-eighths of this quantity being used in the form of snuff;

in Denmark, 70 ounces (4 1/2 lbs.) per head; and in Belgium, 73 1/2

ounces per head;--in New South Wales, where there are no duties, by

official returns, 14 pounds per head." We doubt if these quantities

much exceed the European average, particularly of Germany and Turkey in

Europe. "In some of the States of North America the proportion is much

larger, while among Eastern nations, where there are no duties, it is

believed to be greater still."

The average for the whole human race of one thousand millions has been

reasonably set at seventy ounces per head; which gives a total produce

and consumption of tobacco of two millions of tons, or 4,480,000,000 of

pounds! "At eight hundred pounds an acre, this would require five and

a half million acres of rich land to be kept constantly under

tobacco-cultivation."

"The whole amount of wheat consumed by the inhabitants of Great Britain

weighs only four and one-third million tons." The reader can draw his

own inferences.

The United States are among the largest producers of tobacco, furnishing

one-twentieth of the estimated production of the whole world. According

to the last census, we raised in 1850 about two hundred million pounds.

All the States, with five exceptions,--and two of these are Utah and

Minnesota,--shared, in various degrees, in the growth of this great

staple. Confining our attention to those which raised a million of

pounds and upwards, we find Connecticut and Indiana cited at one million

each; Ohio and North Carolina, at ten to twelve millions; Missouri,

Tennessee, and Maryland, from seventeen to twenty-one millions; Kentucky

and Virginia, about fifty-six million pounds.

Of this gross two hundred million pounds, we export one hundred and

twenty-two millions, leaving about seventy-eight millions for home

consumption.

Not satisfied with the quality of this modest amount, we import also,

from Cuba, Turkey, Germany, etc., about four million pounds, in Havana

and Manila cigars and Turkish and German manufactured smoking-tobacco.

Thus we increase the total of our consumption to eighty-two million

pounds, which gives about three pounds eight ounces to every inhabitant

of the United States, against seventeen ounces in England, and eighteen

ounces in France. From 1840 to 1850, the consumption in the United

States, per head, increased from two pounds and half an ounce to three

pounds eight ounces. Here, we buy our tobacco at a fair profit to the

producer. In most of the countries of Europe it is either subject to

a high tax, or made a government monopoly, both as regards its

cultivation, and its manufacture and sale. France consumes about

forty-one million pounds, and the imperial exchequer is thereby enriched

eighty-six million francs _per annum_. Not only is the poor man thus

obliged to pay an excessive price, but the tobacco furnished him is of

a much inferior quality to ours. "_Petit-caporal_" smoking-tobacco, the

delight of the middling classes of Paris, hardly suits an American's

taste. In Italy more than one _pubblicano_ has enriched himself and

bought nobility by farming the public revenues from tobacco and salt. In

Austria the cigars are detestable, though Hungary grows good tobacco,

and its Turkish border furnishes some of the meerschaum clay. German

smoking-tobaccoes are favorites with students here, but owe their

excellence to their mode of manufacture.

Tobacco, according to some authorities, holds the next place to salt,

as the article most universally and largely used by man,--we mean,

of course, apart from cereals and meats. It is unquestionably the

widest-used narcotic. Opium takes the second rank, and hemp the third;

but the opium--and hashish-eaters usually add the free smoking of

tobacco to their other indulgences.

From these great columns of consumption we may logically deduce two

prime points for our argument.

1st. That an article so widely used must possess some peculiar quality

producing _a desirable effect_.

2d. That an article so widely used cannot produce _any marked

deleterious effect_.

For it must meet some instinctive craving of the human being,--as bread

and salt meet his absolute needs,--to be so widely sought after and

consumed. Fashion does not rule this habit, but it is equally grateful

to the savage and the sage. And it cannot be so ruinous to body and mind

as some reformers assert; otherwise, in the natural progress of causes

and effects, whole nations must have already been extinguished under

its use. Many mighty nations have used it for centuries, and show no

aggregated deterioration from its employment. Individual exceptions

exist in every community. They arise either from idiosyncrasy or from

excess, and they have no weight in the argument.

Now, what are these qualities and these effects? We can best answer the

first part of the question by a quotation.

"In ministering fully to his natural wants and cravings, man passes

through three successive stages.

"First, the necessities of his material nature are provided for. Beef

and bread represent the means by which, in every country, this end is

attained. And among the numerous forms of animal and vegetable food a

wonderful similarity of chemical composition prevails.

"Second, he seeks to assuage the cares of his mind, and to banish

uneasy reflections. Fermented liquors are the agents by which this is

effected." [They are variously produced by every people, and the active

principle is in all the same, namely, Alcohol.]

"Third, he desires to multiply his enjoyments, intellectual and animal,

and for the time to exalt them. This he attains by the aid of narcotics.

And of these narcotics, again, it is remarkable that almost every

country or tribe has its own, either aboriginal or imported; so that

the universal instinct of the race has led, somehow or other, to the

universal supply of this want or craving also."

These narcotics are Opium, Hemp, the Betel, Coca, Thorn-Apple, Siberian

Fungus, Hops, Lettuce, Tobacco. The active principles vary in each, thus

differing from foods and stimulants. Our business is now to inquire into

the chemical constituents of tobacco.

The leaves of this plant owe their properties to certain invariable

active principles, which chemistry has enabled us to separate from those

ingredients which are either inert or common to it and other forms of

vegetation. They are two in number,--a volatile alkali, and a volatile

oil, called _nicotin_ and _nicotianin_, respectively. A third powerful

constituent is developed by combustion, which is named the _empyreumatic

oil_.

Starch, gum, albumen, resin, lignin, extractive, and organic acids exist

in tobacco, as they do, in varying proportions, in other plants. But

the herb under consideration contains a relatively larger proportion of

inorganic salts, as those of lime, potassa, and ammonia,--and especially

of highly nitrogenized substances; which explains why tobacco is

so exhausting a crop to the soil, and why ashes are among its best

fertilizers.

The organic base, _nicotin_, (or _nicotia_, as some chemists prefer to

call it,) exists in tobacco combined with an acid in excess, and in this

state is not volatile. As obtained by distillation with caustic soda,

and afterwards treated with sulphuric acid, etc., it is a colorless

fluid, volatilizable, inflammable, of little smell when cold, but of an

exceedingly acrid, burning taste, and alkaline. Nicotia contains a much

larger proportion of nitrogen than most of the other organic alkalies.

In its action on the animal system it is one of the most virulent

poisons known. It exists in varying, though small proportion, in all

species of tobacco. Those called mild, and most esteemed, seem to

contain the least. Thus, according to Orfila, Havana tobacco yields two

per cent of the alkaloid, and Virginia nearly seven per cent. In the

rankest varieties it rarely exceeds eight parts to the hundred. The

same toxicologist says that it has the remarkable property of resisting

decomposition in the decaying tissues of the body, and he detected it in

the bodies of animals destroyed by it, several months after their death.

In this particular it resembles arsenic.

_Nicotianin_, or the volatile oil, is probably the odorous principle of

tobacco. According to some, it does not exist in the fresh leaves, but

is generated in the drying process. When obtained by distillation, a

pound of leaves will yield only two grains; it is therefore in a much

smaller proportion than the alkaloid, forming only one half of one per

cent. It is a fatty substance, having the odor of tobacco-smoke, and

a bitter taste. Applied to the nose, it occasions sneezing, and taken

internally, giddiness and nausea. It is therefore one of the active

constituents of tobacco, though to a much less degree than nicotin

itself. For while Hermstadt swallowed a grain of nicotianin with

impunity, the vapor of pure nicotin is so irritating that it is

difficult to breathe in a room in which a single drop has been

evaporated.

When distilled in a retort, at a temperature above that of boiling

water, or burned, as we burn it in a pipe, tobacco affords its third

poison, the _empyreumatic oil_. This is acrid, of a dark brown

color, and having a smell as of an old pipe, in the pores of which,

particularly of meerschaum clay, it may be found. It is also narcotic

and very poisonous, one drop killing reptiles, as if by an electric

shock: in this mode of action it is like prussic acid. But this

empyreumatic oil consists of two substances; for, if it be washed with

acetic acid, it loses its poisonous quality. It contains, therefore, a

harmless oil, and a poisonous alkaline substance, which the acetic acid

combines with and removes. It has been shown to contain the alkaloid

nicotia, and this is probably its only active component.

Assuming, therefore, that nicotianin, from its feebler action and small

amount, is not a very efficient principle in producing the narcotic

effects of tobacco, and that the empyreumatic oil consists only of fatty

matters holding the alkali in solution, we are forced to believe that

the only constituent worthy of much attention, as the very soul and

essence of the plant, is the organic base, nicotin, or nicotia.

It is probable that the tobacco-chewer, by putting fifty grains of the

"Solace," "Honey-Dew," or "Cavendish" into his mouth for the purpose

of mastication, introduces at the same time from one to four grains of

nicotin with it, according to the quality of the tobacco he uses. It

is _not_ probable that anything like this amount is absorbed into the

system. Nature protects itself by salivation. It is possible, that, in

smoking one hundred grains of tobacco, there _may_ be drawn into

the mouth two grains or more of the same poison; "for, as nicotin

volatilizes at a temperature below that of burning tobacco, it is

constantly present in the smoke." It is not probable that here, again,

so much is absorbed.

But we will return to this question of the relative effects of chewing,

cigar- and pipe-smoking, and snuff-taking, presently. For we suppose

that the anxious mother, if she has followed us so far, is by this time

in considerable alarm at this wholesale poisoning.

Poisons are to be judged by their effects; for this is the only means we

have of knowing them to be such. And if a poison is in common use, we

must embrace all the results of such use in a perfect generalization

before we can decide impartially. We do not hesitate to eat peaches,

though we know they owe much of their peculiar flavor to prussic acid.

It is but fair to apply an equally large generalization to tobacco.

Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements of the peach

and the bitter almond into a transparent fluid, of which the smell

shall be vertiginous and the taste death. But chemistry is often

misunderstood, in two ways: in the one case, by the incredulity of total

ignorance; in the other, by the overcredulity of imperfect knowledge.

That poor woman who murdered her husband by arsenic not long since

was an instance of the first. She laughed to scorn the idea that the

chemists could discover anything in the ejected contents of the stomach

of her victim, which she voluntarily left in their way. She could not

conceive that the scattered crystals of the fatal powder might be

gathered into a metallic mirror, the first glance at which would reflect

her guilt.

They who gape, horror-struck, at the endless revelations of chemistry,

without giving reason time to act, err in the second manner. Led away by

the brilliant hues and wonderful transformations of the laboratory,

they forget the size of the world outside, in which these changes are

enacted, and the quiet way in which Nature works. The breath of chlorine

is deadly, but we daily eat it in safety, wrapped in its poison-proof

envelope of sodium, as common salt. Carbonic acid is among the gases

most hostile to man, but he drinks it in soda-water or Champagne with

impunity. So we cannot explain how a poison will act, if introduced

into the body in the diluted form in which Nature offers it, and there

subjected to the complicated chemico-vital processes which constitute

life.

In the alembic of the chemist we may learn analysis, and from it infer,

but not imitate, save in a few instances, the synthesis of Nature.

Changes in the arrangement of atoms, without one particle altered that

we can discover, may make all the difference between starch and sugar.

By an obscure change, which we call fermentation, these may become

alcohol, the great stimulant of the world. By subtracting one atom of

water from its elements we change this to ether, the new-found _lethe_

of pain. As from the inexhaustible bottle of the magician, the chemist

can furnish us from the same two elements air or aquafortis. We may be

pardoned these familiar examples to prove that we must not judge of

things by their palpable qualities, when concentrated or in the gross.

That fiery demon, nitric acid, is hid, harmless in its imperceptible

subdivision, in the dew on every flower.

From all this we conclude that the evil effects of tobacco are to be

determined by their proved _physiological_ effects; and also that we

must aid our decision by a survey of its general asserted effects. In

treating of these effects, we shall speak, first, of what is known;

second, of what its opponents assert; and, third, of what we claim as

the results of its use.

What is absolutely known is very little. We see occasional instances of

declining health; we learn that the sufferers smoke or chew, and we are

very apt to ascribe all their maladies to tobacco. So far as we are

aware, the most notorious organic lesion which has been supposed due to

this practice is a peculiar form of cancer of the lip, where the pipe,

and particularly the clay pipe, has pressed upon the part. But more

ample statistics have disproved this theory.

We have as yet become acquainted with no satisfactory series of

experiments upon tobacco analogous to those which have been made of some

articles of food.

The opponents of tobacco, upon whom we consider the burden of proof to

rest, in the absence of any marked ill effects palpable in so large a

consumption of the herb, are thus reduced to generalities.

Tobacco is said to produce derangement of the digestion, and of the

regular, steady action of the nervous system. These effects must be in a

measure connected; but one distinct effect of tobacco is claimed, upon

the secretions of the mouth, with which it comes into direct contact.

It is said to cause a waste and a deterioration of the saliva. Let us

examine this first.

The waste of saliva in young smokers and in immoderate chewers we admit.

The amount secreted by a healthy man has been variously estimated at

from one and a half to three pounds _per diem_. And it certainly seems

as if the whole of this was to be found upon the vile floors of

cars, hotels, and steamboats. The quantity secreted varies much with

circumstances; but experiments prove the _quality_ to be not affected by

the amount.

To show how the deterioration of this fluid may affect digestion, we

must inquire into its normal physiological constitution and uses. Its

uses are of two kinds: to moisten the food, and to convert starch into

sugar. The larger glands fulfil the former; the smaller, mostly, the

latter office. Almost any substance held in the mouth provokes the flow

of saliva by mechanical irritation. Mental causes influence it; for the

thought of food will "make the mouth water," as well as its presence

within the lips. No one who has tried to eat unmoistened food, when

thirsty, will dispute its uses as a solvent. Tobacco seems to be a

direct stimulant to the salivary apparatus. Habit blunts this effect

only to a limited extent. The old smoker has usually some increase of

this secretion, although he does not expectorate. But if he does not

waste this product, he swallows it, it is said, in a state unfit to

promote digestion. The saliva owes its peculiarity to one of its

components, called _ptyalin_. And this element possesses the remarkable

power of converting starch into sugar, which is the first step in its

digestion. Though many azotized substances in a state of decomposition

exert a similar agency, yet it is possessed by _ptyalin_ in a much

greater degree. The gastric juice has probably no action on farinaceous

substances. And it has been proved by experiments, that food moistened

with water digests more slowly than when mixed with the saliva.

More than this, the conversion of starch into sugar has been shown to

be positively retarded in the stomach by the acidity of the gastric

secretions. Only after the azotized food has been somewhat disintegrated

by the action of the gastric juice, and the fluids again rendered

alkaline by the presence of saliva, swallowed in small quantities for

a considerable time after eating, does the saccharifying process go on

with normal rapidity and vigor.

Now starch is the great element, in all farinaceous articles, which

is adapted to supply us with calorifacient food. "In its original

condition, either raw or when broken up by boiling, it does not appear

that starch is capable of being absorbed by the alimentary canal. By its

conversion into sugar it can alone become a useful aliment." This is

effected almost instantaneously by the saliva in the mouth, and at a

slower rate in the stomach.

Obviously, then, if the use of tobacco interferes with the normal action

of the saliva, and if the digestion of starch ends in the stomach, here

is the strong point in the argument of the opponents of tobacco. We

should wonder at the discrepancy between physiology and facts, theory

and the evidence of our senses and daily experience among the world

of smokers, and be ready to renounce either science or "the weed."

Fortunately for our peace of mind and for our respect for physiology,

the first point of the proposition is not satisfactorily proved, and the

second is untrue. We are not certain that nicotin ruins ptyalin; we are

certain that the functions of other organs are vicarious of those of the

salivary glands.

We say that it is not satisfactorily proved that tobacco impairs the

sugar-making function of the saliva. At least, we have never seen the

proof from recorded experiments. Such may exist, but we have met only

with loose assertions to this effect, of a similar nature to

those hygienic _dicta_ which we find bandied about in the

would-be-physiological popular journals, which are so plentiful in

this country, and which may be styled the "yellow-cover" literature of

science.

We acknowledge this to be the weak point in our armor, and are open to

further light. Yet more, for the sake of hypothesis, we will assume it

proved. What follows? Are we to get no more sugar while we smoke? By no

means. Hard by the stomach lies the _pancreas_, an organ so similar in

structure to the salivary glands, that even so minute an observer as

Kölliker does not think it requisite to give it a separate description.

Its secretion, which is poured into the second stomach, contains a

ferment analogous to that of the saliva, and amounts probably to about

seven ounces a day. The food, on leaving the stomach, is next subjected

to its influence, together with that of the bile. It helps digest fatty

matters by its emulsive powers; it has been more recently supposed to

form a sort of _peptone_ with nitrogenized articles also; but, what is

more to our purpose, it turns starch into sugar even more quickly than

the saliva itself. And even if the reformers were to beat us from this

stronghold, by proving that tobacco impaired the saccharifying power of

this organ also, we should still find the mixed fluids supplied by the

smaller, but very numerous glands of the intestines, sufficient to

accomplish the requisite modification of starch, though more slowly and

to a less degree.

We come now to the second count in the indictment,--that tobacco

injuriously affects the nervous system, and through it the digestion.

The accusation is here more vague and indefinite, and the answer also

is less susceptible of proof. Both sides must avail themselves of

circumstantial, rather than direct evidence.

That digestion is in direct dependence upon the nervous system, and that

even transitory or emotional states of the latter affect the former,

there can be no doubt. It is so familiar a fact, that instances need

hardly be cited to prove it. Hence we are told, that tobacco, by

deranging the one, disorders the other,--that nervousness, or morbid

irritability of the nerves, palpitations and tremulousness, are soon

followed by emaciation and dyspepsia, or more or less inability to

digest.

We conceive Prout, an eminent authority, to be near the truth, when he

says of tobacco, "The strong and healthy suffer comparatively little,

while the weak and predisposed to disease fall victims to its poisonous

operation." The hod-carrier traversing the walls of lofty buildings, and

the sailor swinging on the yard-arm, are not subject to nervousness,

though they smoke and chew; nor are they prone to dyspepsia, unless from

excesses of another kind.

It has not been shown that tobacco either hastens or delays the

metamorphosis of tissue,--that it drains the system by waste, or clogs

it by retarding the natural excretions. We must turn, then, to its

direct influence upon the nervous system to convince ourselves of its

ill effects, if such exist.

Nor has it been proved that the nervous influence is affected in such

a way as directly to impair the innervation of the organic functions,

which derive their chief impulse to action from the scattered ganglia of

the sympathetic system. Opium, the most powerful narcotic, benumbs the

brain into sleep; produces a corresponding reaction, on awakening;

shuts up the secretions, except that of the skin, and thus deranges the

alimentary functions. The decriers of tobacco will, we conceive, be

unable to show that it produces such effects.

The reformers are reduced, then, to the vague generality, that smoking

and chewing "affect the nerves."

Students, men of sedentary, professional habits, persons of a very

nervous temperament, or those subject to much excitement in business

and politics, sometimes show debility and languor, or agitation and

nervousness, while they smoke and chew. Are there no other causes at

work, sufficient in themselves to produce these effects? Are want of

exercise, want of air, want of rest, and want of inherited vigor to be

eliminated from the estimate, while tobacco is made the scape-goat of

all their troubles?

Climate, and the various influences affecting any race which has

migrated after a stationary residence of generations to a new country

extending under different parallels of latitude, have been reasonably

accused of rendering us a nervous people. It is not so reasonable to

charge one habit with being the sole cause of this, although we should

be more prudent in not following it to excess. The larger consumption

of tobacco here is due both to the cheapness of the product and to

the wealth of the consumer. But it does not follow that we are more

subjected to its narcotic influences because we use the best varieties

of the weed. On the contrary, the poor and rank tobaccoes, grown under a

northern sky, are the richest in nicotin.

But it will be better to continue the argument about its effects upon

the nervous system in connection with the assertions of the reformers.

The following is a list, by no means complete, of these asserted ill

effects from its use.

Tobacco is said to cause softening of the brain,--dimness of

vision,--("the Germans smoke; the Germans are a _spectacled_ nation!"

_post hoc, ergo propter hoc?_ the laborious intellectual habits of this

people, and their trying "text," are considered of no account,)--cancer

of the stomach,--disease of the liver,--dyspepsia,--enfeebled

nutrition, and consequent emaciation,--dryness of the mouth,--"the

clergyman's sore-throat" and loss of voice,--irritability of the nervous

system,--tremulousness,--palpitation and paralysis,--and, among the

moral ills, loss of energy, idleness, drunkenness. A fearful catalogue,

which would dedicate the _tabatière_ to Pandora, were it true.

Hygienic reformers are usually unequalled in imaginary horrors, except

by the charlatans who vend panaceas.

We have no reasons for believing that tobacco causes softening of the

brain equal in plausibility to those which ascribe it to prolonged and

excessive mental effort. The statistics of disease prove cancers of

other organs to be twice as frequent, among females, as cancer of the

stomach is among males; and an eminent etiologist places narcotics

among the least proved causes of this disease. A hot climate, abuse

of alcohol, a sedentary life, and sluggish digestion happen, rather

curiously, to be very frequent concomitants, if not causes, of disease

of the liver. Dyspepsia haunts both sexes, and, we venture to assert,

though we cannot bring figures to prove it, is as frequent among those

who do not use tobacco as among those who do. We are ready to concede

that excessive chewing and smoking, particularly if accompanied by large

expectoration, may impair nutrition and cause emaciation: that the mass

of mankind eat and digest and live, as well as use "the weed," is proof

that its moderate employment is not ordinarily followed by this result.

Dryness of the mouth follows expectoration as a matter of course; but

the salivation excited in an old smoker by tobacco is very moderate, and

not succeeded by thirst, unless the smoke be inhaled too rapidly and at

too high a temperature.

We come next to a very tender point with reformers, the laryngeal cough

and failing voice of the reverend clergy. The later generations of

ministers of this vicinity, as a body, have abandoned tobacco, and yet

the evil has not diminished. An eminent divine of our acquaintance,

who does not smoke daily, always finds a cigar relieve a trifling

bronchitis, to which he is occasionally subject The curious will find in

the "Medical Journal" of this city, for 1839, that quite as much can be

said on one side as on the other of this subject.

The minor, rarely the graver affections of the nervous system, do follow

the use of tobacco in excess. We admit this willingly; but we deny these

effects to its moderate use by persons of ordinary health and of no

peculiar idiosyncrasy. Numerous cases of paralysis among tobacco-takers

in France were traced to the lead in which the preparation was

enveloped.

We pass next to what we claim as the effects of _moderate_

tobacco-using, and will take first the evidence of the toxicologists.

Both Pereira and Christison agree that "no well-ascertained ill effects

have been shown to result from the habitual practice of smoking." Beck,

a modern authority, says, "Common observation settles the question, that

the moderate and daily use of tobacco _does not_ prove injurious. This

is a general rule": and he adds, that exceptions necessarily exist, etc.

The repugnance and nausea which greet the smoker, in his first attempts

to use tobacco, are not a stronger argument against it than the fact

that the system so soon becomes habituated to these effects is a proof

of its essential innocuousness.

Certainly the love of tobacco is not an instinctive appetite, like that

for nitrogen and carbon in the form of food. Man was not born with a

cigar in his mouth, and it is not certain that the _Nicotiana tabacum_

flourished in the Garden of Eden. But history proves the existence of

an instinct among all races--call it depraved, if you will, the fact

remains--leading them to employ narcotics. And narcotics all nations

have sought and found. We venture to affirm that tobacco is harmless as

any. The betel and the hop can alone compare with it in this respect;

and the hop is not a narcotic which satisfies alone; others are used

with it. Opium and Indian hemp are not to be mentioned in comparison;

while coca, in excess, is much more hurtful.

Tobacco may more properly be called a sedative than a narcotic. Opium,

the type of the latter class, is in its primary action excitant, but

secondarily narcotic. The opium-eaters are familiar with this, and

learn by experience to regulate the dose so as to prolong the first and

shorten the second effects, as much as possible.

Tobacco, on the other hand, is primarily sedative and relaxing. A high

authority says of its physiological action:--

"First, That its greater and first effect is to assuage and allay and

soothe the system in general.

"Second, That its lesser and second, or after effect, is to excite and

invigorate, and at the same time give steadiness and fixity to the

powers of thought."

Either of these effects will predominate, we conceive, according to

the intellectual state and capacity of the individual, as well as in

accordance with the amount used.

The dreamy Oriental is sunk into deeper reverie under the influence of

tobacco, and his happiness while smoking seems to consist in thinking of

nothing. The studious German, on the contrary, "thinks and dreams,

and dreams and thinks, alternately; but while his body is soothed and

stilled, his mind is ever awake."

This latter description resembles, to compare small things with great,

the effects of opium, as detailed by De Quincey.

"In habitual smokers," says Pereira, "the practice, when moderately

indulged, produces that remarkably soothing and tranquillizing effect on

the mind which has caused it to be so much admired and adopted by all

classes of society."

The pleasure derived from tobacco is very hard to define, since it is

negative rather than positive, and to be estimated more by what it

prevents than by what it produces. It relieves the little vexations and

cares of life, soothes the harassed mind, and promotes quiet reflection.

This it does most of all when used sparingly and after labor. But

if incessantly consumed, it keeps up a constant, but mild cerebral

exhilaration. The mind acts more promptly and more continuously under

its use. We think any tobacco-consumer will bear us out in this

definition of its varying effects.

After a full meal, if it does not help, it at least hides digestion.

"It settles one's dinner," as the saying is, and gives that feeling of

quiet, luxurious _bien-aise_ which would probably exist naturally in

a state of primeval health. It promotes, with most persons, the

peristaltic movements of the alimentary passages by its relaxing

properties.

Smoking is eminently social, and favors domestic habits. And in this

way, we contend, it prevents drinking, rather than leads to it. Many

still associate the cigar with the bar-room. This notion should have

become obsolete ere this, for it has an extremely limited foundation in

fact. Bachelors and would-be-manly boys are not the only consumers of

tobacco, though they are the best patrons of the bar. The poor man's

pipe retains him by his own fireside, as well as softens his domestic

asperities.

Excess in tobacco, like excess in any other material good meant for

moderate use, is followed by evil effects, more or less quickly,

according to the constitution and temperament of the abuser. The

lymphatic and obese can smoke more than the sanguine and nervous, with

impunity. How much constitutes excess varies with each individual.

Manufacturers of tobacco do not appear to suffer. Christison states, as

the result of the researches of MM. Parent-Duchatelet and D'Arcet among

four thousand workmen in the tobacco-manufactories of France, that they

found no evidence of its being unwholesome. Moderate tobacco-users

attain longevity equal to that of any other class in the community.

We will cite only the following brief statistics from an old physician

of a neighboring town. In looking over the list of the oldest men, dead

or alive, within his circle of acquaintance, he finds a total of 67 men,

from 73 to 93 years of age. Their average age is 78 and a fraction. Of

these 67, 54 were smokers or chewers; 9 only, non-consumers of tobacco;

and 4 were doubtful, or not ascertained. About nine-elevenths smoked or

chewed. The compiler quaintly adds, "How much longer these men might

have lived without tobacco, it is impossible to determine."

The tobacco-leaf is consumed by man usually in three ways: by smoking,

snuffing, or chewing. The first is the most common; the last is the most

disagreeable.

Tobacco is smoked in the East Indies, China, and Siam; in Turkey and

Persia; over Europe generally; and in North and South America. Cigars

are preferred in the East and West Indies, Spain, England, and America.

China, Turkey, Persia, and Germany worship the pipe. In Europe the pipe

is patronized on account of its cheapness. Turks and Persians use the

mildest forms of pipe-smoking, choosing pipes with long, flexible stems,

and having the smoke cooled and purified by passing through water. The

Germans prefer the porous meerschaum,--the Canadians, the common clay.

Women smoke habitually in China, the East and West Indies, and to a less

extent in South America, Spain, and France.

We have no fears that any reasoning of ours would induce the other

sex to use tobacco. The ladies set too just a value on the precious

commodity of their charms for that. There is little danger that they

would do anything which might render them disagreeable. The practice of

snuff-taking is about the only form they patronize, and that to a slight

extent.

France is the home of snuff. A large proportion of all the tobacco

consumed there is used in this form. The practice prevails to a large

extent also in Iceland and Scotland. The Icelander uses a small horn,

like a powder-horn, to hold his snuff. Inserting the smaller end into

the nostril, he elevates the other, and thus conveys the pungent powder

directly to the part. The more delicate Highlander carries the snuff to

his nose on a little shovel. This can be surpassed only by the habit

of "dipping," peculiar to some women of the United States, and whose

details will not bear description.

Chewing prevails _par excellence_ in our own country, and among the

sailors of most nations,--to some extent also in Switzerland, Iceland,

and among the Northern races. It is the safest and most convenient form

at sea.

By smoking, each of the three active ingredients of tobacco is rendered

capable of absorption. The empyreumatic oil is produced by combustion.

The pipe retains this and a portion of the nicotin in its pores. The

cigar, alone, conveys all the essential elements into the system.

Liebig once asserted that cigar-smoking was prejudicial from the

amount of gaseous carbon inhaled. We cannot believe this. The heat of

cigar-smoke may have some influence on the teeth; and, on the whole, the

long pipe, with a porous bowl, is probably the best way of using tobacco

in a state of ignition.

By repeated fermentations in preparing snuff, much of the nicotin is

evaporated and lost. Yet snuff-takers impair the sense of smell, and

ruin the voice, by clogging up the passages with the finer particles of

the powder. The functions of the labyrinthine caverns of the nose and

forehead, and of the delicate osseous laminae which constitute the

sounding-boards of vocalization, are thus destroyed.

Chewing is the most constant, as it is the nastiest habit. The old

chewer, safe in the blunted irritability of the salivary glands, can

continue his practice all night, if he be so infatuated, without

inconvenience. In masticating tobacco, nicotin and nicotianin are rolled

about in the mouth with the quid, but are not probably so quickly

absorbed as when in the gaseous state. Yet chewers are the greatest

spitters, and have a characteristic drooping of the angle of the lower

lip, which points to loss of power in the _leavator_ muscles.

Latakia, Shiraz, Manila, Cuba, Virginia, and Maryland produce the most

valuable tobaccoes. Though peculiar soils and dressings may impart

a greater aroma and richness to the plant, by the variations in the

quantity of nicotianin, as compared with the other organic elements, yet

we are inclined to think that the diminished proportion of nicotin in

the best varieties in the cause of their superior flavor to the rank

Northern tobaccoes, and that it is mainly because they are milder that

they are most esteemed. So, too, the cigar improves with age, because

a certain amount of nicotin evaporates and escapes. Taste in cigars

varies, however, from the Austrian government article, a very rank

"long-nine," with a straw running through the centre to improve its

suction, to the Cuban _cigarrito_, whose ethereal proportions three

whiffs will exhaust.

The manufacture of smoking-tobaccoes is as much and art in Germany as

getting up a fancy brand of cigars is here; and the medical philosopher

of that country will gravely debate whether "Kanaster" or "Varinas" be

best suited for certain forms of convalescence; tobacco being almost

as indispensable as gruel, in returning health. We think the

light pipe-smoker will find a combination of German and Turkish

smoking-tobaccoes a happy thought. The old smoker may secure the best

union of delicacy and strength in the Virginia "natural leaf."

Among the eight or ten species of the tobacco-plant now recognized by

botanists, the _Nicotiana tabacum_ and the _Nicotiana rustica_ hold the

chief place. Numerous varieties of each of these, however, are named and

exist.

We condense from De Bow's "Industrial Resources of the South and West" a

brief account of tobacco-culture in this country. "The tobacco is best

sown from the 10th to the 20th of March, and a rich loam is the most

favorable soil. The plants are dressed with a mixture of ashes, plaster,

soot, salt, sulphur, soil, and manure." After they are transplanted,

we are told that "the soil best adapted to the growth of tobacco is a

light, friable one, or what is commonly called a sandy loam; not too

flat, but rolling, undulating land." Long processes of hand-weeding must

be gone through, and equal parts of plaster and ashes are put on each

plant. "Worms are the worst enemy," and can be effectually destroyed

only by hand. "When the plant begins to yellow, it is time to put it

away; and it is cut off close to the ground." After wilting a little on

the ground, it is dried on sticks, by one of the three processes called

"pegging, spearing, and splitting." "When dry, the leaves are stripped

off and tied in bundles of one fifth or sixth of a pound each. It is

sorted into three or four qualities, as Yellow, Bright, Dull, etc."

Next it is "bulked," or put into bundles, and these again dried, and

afterwards "conditioned," and packed in hogsheads weighing from six

hundred to a thousand pounds each.

It would be too long to detail the processes of cigar- and snuff-making,

the latter of which is quite complicated.

We were happy to learn from the fearful work of Hassall on "Food and

its Adulterations," that tobacco was one of the articles least tampered

with; and particularly that there was no opium in cheroots, but nothing

more harmful than hay and paper. He ascribes this immunity mainly to

the vigilance of the excisemen. But we have recently seen a work on

the adulteration of tobacco, whose microscopic plates brought back our

former misgivings. Molasses is a very common agent used to give color

and render it toothsome. Various vegetable leaves, as the rhubarb,

beech, walnut, and mullein, as well as the less delectable bran, yellow

ochre, and hellebore, in snuff, are also sometimes used to defraud.

Saltpetre is often sprinkled on, in making cigars, to improve their

burning.

The Indians mixed tobacco in their pipes with fragrant herbs. Cascarilla

bark is a favorite with some smokers; it is a simple aromatic and

tonic, but, when smoked, is said sometimes to occasion vertigo and

intoxication.

We have before observed that tobacco is a very exhausting crop to the

soil. The worn-out tobacco-plantations of the South are sufficient

practical proof of this, while it is also readily explained by

chemistry. The leaves of tobacco are among the richest in incombustible

ash, yielding, when burned, from 19 to 28 _per cent_. of inorganic

substance. This forms the abundant ashes of tobacco-pipes and of cigars.

All this has been derived from the soil where it was raised, and it is

of a nature very necessary to vegetation, and not very abundant in the

most fertile lands. "Every ton of dried tobacco-leaves carries off from

four to five hundred-weight of this mineral matter,--as much as is

contained in fourteen tons of the grain of wheat." It follows

that scientific agriculture can alone restore this waste to the

tobacco-plantation.

There is one other aspect of this great subject, which is almost

peculiar to New England, the home of reform. Certain Puritanical

pessimists have argued that the use of tobacco is immoral. There are

few, except our own sober people, who would admit this question at

all. We would treat this prejudice with the respect due to all sincere

reforms. And we have attempted to show, that, since all races have used

and will use narcotics, we had better yield a little, lest more be

taken, and concede them tobacco, which is more harmless than many that

are largely consumed. We have proved to our own satisfaction, and we

hope to theirs, that tobacco _in moderation_ neither affects the health

nor shortens life; that it does not create an appetite for stimulants,

but rather supplies their place; and that it favors sociality and

domestic habits more than the reverse.

If the formation of any habit be objected to, we reply, that this is

a natural tendency of man, that things become less prejudicial by

repetition, and that a high hygienic authority advises us "to be regular

even in our vices."

As we began in a light, we close in a more sober vein, apologists for

tobacco, rather than strongly advocating either side. On one point we

are sure that we shall agree with the ladies, and that is in a sincere

denunciation of the habit of smoking at a tender age. And although, in

accordance with the tendency of the times, the school-boy whom we caught

attached to a "long-nine" would consistently reply, _"Civis Americanus

sum_!" we shall persist in claiming the censorship of age over those on

whose chins the callow down of adolescence is yet ungrown.

* * * * *

SHAKSPEARE DONE INTO FRENCH.

In the first place, it really was an immense success, and Shylock, or

Sheeloque, as they dubbed him, was called before the curtain seven

times, and in most appropriate humility nearly laid his nose on his

insteps as he bowed, and quite showed his spine.

It certainly was like Shakspeare in this, that it had five acts; but

when I have made that concession, and admitted that Sheeloque was

_Le Juif de Venise_, I think I have named all the cardinal points of

similarity in the "Merchant of Venice" and "Le Juif" of that same

unwholesome place. To be sure, there is a suspicion of _le devin

Williams_, as they will call him, continually cropping out; but a

conscientious man would not swear to one line of it, and I do not

think Shakspeare would be justified in suing the French author for

compensation under the National Copyright-Act. I speak of Shakspeare as

existing, because it is my belief he does, in a manner so to speak.

I have intimated that "Le Juif" has five acts; but I have not yet

committed myself to the assertion that he was in seven _tableaux_, and

possessed a prologue.

It is now my pleasing duty to force you through the five acts, and the

one prologue, and the seven _tableaux_,--every one of them.

This prologue is divided as to the theatre into two parts: to left,

Sheeloque's domestic interior,--to right, a practicable canal. In the

very first line out crops Shylock's love of good bargains; and I

give the reader my word, the little Frenchmen saw that this was

characteristic, and applauded vehemently. _"Bon_," said I,--"if they

applaud the first line, what will they do with the last act?"

It need not be said that Shylock dabbles in those bills which Venetian

swells of the fifteenth century, in common with those of a later age

and more western land, will manipulate, in spite of all the political

economy from Confucius down to Mr. Mill; and in this particular instance

and prologue the names of the improvidents are Leone and Ubaldo, neither

of which, if my memory serve me, is Shakspearian. These gentlemen

considerably shake my traditional respect for sixteenth-century

Venetian _Aristos_, for they insult that Jew till I wonder where a count

and a duke have learnt such language: but they serve a purpose; they

trot Shylock out, so to speak, and give our author an opportunity

of doing his best with A 1. Shylock's great speech. Here is the

apostrophe:--

"But yesterday--no later past than yesterday--thou didst bid thy

mistress call at me from her balcony; thy servants by thy will did cast

mud on me, and thy hounds sped snapping after me,'"--whereby we may infer

they went hunting in Venice, in the fifteenth century. It must have been

rather dangerous running. Nor could the Venetian nobles of that good old

time have been very proper; for Leone and Ubaldo justify themselves by

saying they were drunk.

It is after this pretty excuse that Shylock has a soliloquy as long as

his beard,--and I hear really loud opposition to this didacticism in the

pit; but, however, this slow work soon meets compensation in violent

action. Shylock won't renew, and the nobles get indignant; so they

propose to pay Shylock with more kicks than halfpence. Here the action

begins; for Shylock protests he will bite a bit out of them; and though

one of these long-sleeved swells warns him that all threats by Jews

against Christians are an imprisonment manner, Shylock rashly prepares

for a defence. Away fly the lords after Shylock, over go the chairs,

down goes the table, and I suppose Shylock _does_ hit "one of them"; for

the two lords go off quite triumphantly, with the intimation that he

will be in prison in one hour from that.

Then the Jew calls for--Sarah; and this same comes in on tiptoe, for

fear of waking the baby. This Shylock _fils_ Sarah proceeds to describe

as equally beautiful with Abel and Moses, which seems to give Shylock

_père_ great comfort,--though I am bound to admit the lowly whispered

doubt on the part of a pit-neighbor of mine as to Sarah's capability of

judging in the matter.

Shylock is preparing for prison, it seems, and one little necessity is a

prayer for said son. Sarah comes in with a response, Shylock leaves

off praying "immediate," to tell Sarah she is no vulgar servant, which

assurance is received in the tearful manner. And here it comes a

little faint whiff of the real play. In leaving home, Shylock's French

plagiarizes the Jew's speech to Jessica, even down to the doubt the Jew

has about leaving his house at all.

There has been no necessity for stating that Sara supposes herself the

widow of a libel on his sex, a man unspeakable; and the moment I hear he

is, or was, a man of crime unspeakable, I know he will turn up. Shylock

having gone away,--I do not know where,--up comes a gondola to the

front-door, and, of course, in walks Sarah's husband. "Good evening,

Ma'am," says he. "God of Israel!" says she. And then such an explanation

as this infamous husband gives! He puts in, that he is a pirate; that

his captain, whom he describes as a _Vénus en corsaire_, has lost a

son, and wants another; hence speaker, name Arnheim, wants that little

Israelite who is so much like Abel and Moses at one and the same moment:

though how Arnheim should know of that little creation, or how he should

know him to be also like the lost infantile pirate as well as Abel and

Moses, does not sufficiently appear,--as, indeed, my neighbor, who is

suggestive of a Greek Chorus in a blue blouse, discovers in half a dozen

disparaging syllables.

Of course, when the supposed widow hears this, her cries ought to wake

up all hearing Venice, but not one Venetian comes to her aid; and though

she uses her two hands enough for twenty, she has not got her way when

thoroughly breathed.

"Sarah," says that energetic woman's husband, "Sarah, don't be a fool!"

Then I know the baby is coming: there never yet was a French prologue

without a baby,--it seems a French unity; sometimes there are two

babies, who always get mixed up. But to our business.

Out comes the baby, (they never scream,) and--alas that for effect he

should thus commit himself!--Arnheim rips Sarah up, and down she goes as

dead as the Queen of Sheba.

Then comes a really fine scene. Shylock enters, learns all; in come

soldiers for Shylock, and, of course, accuse him of the murder;

whereupon Shylock shows on the blade a cross. "Doth a Jew wear a knife

with a cross on it?" says he. "Go to!--'tis a Christian murder."

To this the soldier-head has nothing to say; so he hurries Shylock off

to prison, and down comes the curtain.

"Hum!" says the Greek Chorus,--"it might be worse."

ACT I.

It is clear there must be lady characters, or I am quite sure the Greek

Chorus would find fault wofully,--and the only one we have had, Sarah,

to wit, can't decently appear again, except in the spiritual form. Well,

there is the original Portia,--alas for that clever, virtuous, and

noble lady!--how is she fallen in the French!--she is noble-looking and

clever,--but the third quality, oh, dear me! This disreputable is named

Imperia, and the real Bassanio becomes one Honorius, who is, as he

should be, the bosom friend of one Andronic, which is Antonio, I would

have you know. I have thought over it two minutes, and have come to the

conclusion that the less I say about Imperia the better, and I know the

Anglo-Saxon would not agree with Imperia,--but, as the Frenchman does,

I offer you one, or part of one of Imperia's songs, as bought by me for

two disgraceful _sous_.

"Déjà l'aube rayonne et luit,

La nuit

Finit;

Maîtresse,

L'heure enchanteresse

Passe et fuit...

A ton arrêt je dois me rendre.

Sort jaloux! (_bis._)

Hâtons-nous,

Il faut descendre

Sans réveiller son vieil époux!..."

Well,--what do you think of it? Now I will not mention her again,--I

will refer to her, when I shall have vexatious occasion, as "that

woman." And, indeed, "that woman" and Honorius set us up in

comprehension of matters progressing. It seems that quite twenty years

have passed since Sarah's soul slid through a knife-gash; that Honorius

and Andronic, who have come from Smyrna, (why?) are almost brothers;

that Honorius is good in this fact only, that he knows he is really bad;

and that Andronic is the richest and most moral man in Venice,--though

why, under those circumstances, he should be friendly with such a rip as

Honorius, Honorius does not inform us.

I shall pass over the next scenes, and come to that in which all the

creditors of all the lords are brought on to the stage in a state which

calls for the interference of the Doge: they are all drunk,--except

Shylock. This scene really is a startler. Shylock, now dashed with

gray, and nearly double, comes up to "that woman" and calls her sister;

whereupon she demanding that explanation which I and the Greek Chorus

simultaneously want, Shylock states that _he_ is Usury and _she_ Luxury,

"and they have one father."

"Queer old man!!!" says "that woman."