Smokebox

“ A heap of fire kindling wood in one corner, a bench or stool as black as soot can paint it, a few bowls, a few bits of rags, a few fragments of food, and a coolie squatting over a struggling fire,—coolie who rises out of the dim smoke like the evil genii in the Arabian tale. There is no chimney, there is no window, there is no drainage. We are in a cubic sink, where we can scarcely stand erect. From the small door pours a dense volume of smoke, some of it stale smoke, which our entry has forced out of the corners ”

“ The growing popularity of the cigar made smoking less unfashionable than it had been among the upper classes of society; but among humbler folk pipe-smoking had never "gone out." Every public-house did its regular trade in clays, known as churchwardens and Broseleys, and by other names either of familiarity or descriptive of the place of manufacture; and on the mantelpiece or table of inn or ale-house stood the tobacco-box. Miss Jekyll, in her delightful book on "Old West Surrey," figures an example of these old public-house tobacco-boxes which is made of lead. ”

“ This is a smoke-house; you see it’s on one side of the chimney, so that there won’t be heat enough go in there to melt the hams or fish. All you have to do, when you want to smoke anything, is to hang it up on these lug-poles, and the common fire you have every day will smoke it. It’ll be a nice place for Ben, when he has an ox-yoke, wooden bowl, or shovel to season or toughen. ”

“ Around the pipe as an evolutionary centre, a whole intricate and elegant little world of smoking furniture and smoking etiquette has come into existence. There is the tabako-ire, or tobacco-pouch,—as far removed in its dainty beauty from the cheap gutta-percha atrocities of Europe as a butterfly is from a blunderbuss,—the netsuke, or carved button, used to attach the pouch to the owner's girdle, and above all the tabakobon, or smoking-box, which contains a brazier and other implements. ”

“ If no smoke then comes out at crevices into the room, it is right: if any smoke is perceived to come out, move the register, so as to give a little draught, and it will go the right way. Thus the room will be kept warm all night; for the chimney being almost entirely stopt, very little cold air, if any, will enter the room at any crevice. When you come to re-kindle the fire in the morning, turn open the register before you lift up the slider, otherwise, if there be any smoke in the fireplace, it will come out into the room. ”

“ I came out here to the old smokehouse to get away from everybody. Folks get on my nerves—more than often! This old smokehouse sort of sets me up—better than the perfume you girls use. Bah!”
Sim and Arden were aware of a distinctly smoky odor floating out to them above the head of Viney Tucker. They were aware, now, of the use to which the small stone building had formerly been put. In the old days hams and bacon were cured there over a fire of hickory branches and corncobs, and that smoky smell always remained. It was a curious whim of the old lady to come there for solitude ”

“ This type of smokehouse is large enough for the cuts from one hog. An old refrigerator or a simple frame house can be used rather than a barrel. The fire can also be built in a ventilated barrel which is connected to the smokehouse by a stove pipe.
Figure 90.—Barrel for smoking.
Permanent structures suitable for smoking meat should be constructed if large quantities of meat are to be smoked. Tight construction and well-fitted ventilators provide effective regulation of the air flow past the meat. An outside firebox makes temperature control easy and reduces fire hazard. ”

“ If the wind strikes the corner of the box, it shuts two doors and opens their opposites. This scheme has been tried with success in a chimney which always filled the room with smoke, but which, since adopted, has never smoked the room at all. ”

“ From a glass tube extending from the flask there poured out volumes of the pungent odor, and, as the puffs came, Tom and Phil could hear the air pump being worked. It was a “studentless smoker,” the air pump, attached to a rubber hose which exhausted the air from the flask, producing exactly the effect of some one puffing a pipe. The room was blue with the haze of tobacco, and as the astonished professor stood and gazed at the strange sight more smoke arose from the flask. Then, from somewhere in the dark recesses of the corridor came a voice. ”

“ We must confess that our objection to the Smoke Nuisance does not extend so much to the honest chimney-pot of private life, or to the tall smoke-evolving structure of manufacturing industry, as to that useless and disgusting object, the street smoker, who puffs his "cheap and nasty" cigar in the faces of innocent passengers. We sincerely hope that Lord Palmerston will render it imperative on those offensive locomotives to consume their own smoke in some way or other. ”

“ By tapping with the band on the canvas side of the box, vortex rings of the clouded air are driven out, precisely similar in appearance to those smoke-rings which some expert tobacco-smokers can produce by tapping on their cheeks, or to those larger ones which we sometimes see blown out from the funnel of a locomotive. ”

“ And without remark, I took out my notebook and made an accurate reproduction of them.
[Illustration: Marks on the tobacco-box lid]
“Now, what on earth do you make those scratches out to be?” said Danthorpe. “Are they signs, symbols, hieroglyphics, or what are they? Are they accidental, are they a mere whim, or are they there of set purpose? Does a man make marks in a good silver tobacco-box like that for nothing? And there’s another thing. Does a man——”
“My dear fellow,” I exclaimed, interrupting him, “don’t tax my brains too much. ”

“ In the fashionable world the snuff-box was all-powerful. The Prince Regent was devoted to snuff, but disdained tobacco. He had a "cellar of snuff," which after his death was sold, said John Bull, August 15, 1830, "to a well-known purveyor, for £400." Lord Petersham, famous among dandies, made a wonderful collection of snuffs and snuff-boxes, and was curious in his choice of a box to carry. ”

“ Jars soon came into vogue, and there are quite ancient specimens, especially the old japanned boxes, ornamented with figures in gilt.
There is, of course, a vast difference between the storage jar and the smaller box carried about by the smoker much in the same way as the pouch is now used. Many still prefer metal to other materials, and it is no uncommon thing to see brass and steel boxes in use in industrial districts. Few, however, excepting modern replicas of the antique, are decorated in the way the old Dutch tobacco boxes of brass were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. ”

“ Chrysanthème, like a gypsy, squats before a particular square box, made of red wood, which contains a little tobacco jar, a little porcelain stove full of hot embers, and finally a little bamboo pot serving at the same time as ash-tray and spittoon. (Madame Prune's smoking-box downstairs, and every smoking-box in Japan, both of men and women, is exactly the same, and contains precisely the same objects, arranged in precisely the same manner; and wherever it may be, whether in the house of the rich or the poor, it always lies about somewhere on the floor.) ”

“ MY friend, the Architect, who is something of a traveller, was showing us various curios which he had gathered during a visit to the Orient.
"Here is something for you," he said, picking up a small box and turning it over in his hand. "You are a cigarette-smoker; take this home with you. It was given to me in Cairo by a species of fakir, who fancied I had done him a good turn."
The box was covered with glazed, yellow paper, so skilfully gummed as to appear to be all one piece. It bore no label, no stamp -- nothing to indicate its contents.
"How do you know they are cigarettes?" ”

“ Whenever these people meet with difficulties, the rule is to take a seat, and from the pocket take a small piece of paper or corn husk; a tin box supplies tobacco, to be rolled up in the shape of a cigar, and placed behind the ear; a match box and strike-a-light are produced, and the difficulty is considered in so cool a manner, while the smoke curls upwards, that unless you saw a mule, baggage and all, had broken through a miserable bridge, or fallen down a precipice, you would not believe anything had happened. ”

“ The opposite side, and overhead, is devoted to the smoke-house, in which the various girts and hooks may be placed, for sustaining the meats to be smoked. The building should be tied together by joists at the plates, properly anchored into the walls, to prevent their spreading. A stove, or pans, or neither, as the method of keeping the smoke alive may govern, can be placed inside, to which the chimney in the roof may serve as a partial escape, or not, as required. ”

“ Then there was a pile of magazines and beyond them a stack of books whose subjects varied from Balzac to strange, scientific-sounding names. At the other end of the shelf, within easy reach from one lying upon the bunk, was a cigar-box full of smoking tobacco, a half-dozen books of cigarette papers, and several blocks of the small, evil-smelling matches which men of the outdoors carry for their compact form and slow, steady blaze.
At the head of the bed hung a flour-sack half full of some hard, lumpy stuff which Billy Louise had not noticed before. ”

“ I have never hated any one as I loathed that boy, and to escape him I took to going round by the Lowther Arcade. It was here that my eye fell on the smoking-table. In the Lowther Arcade, if the attendants catch you looking at any article for a fraction of a second, it is done up in brown paper, you have paid your money, and they have taken down your address before you realize that you don't want anything. In this way I became the owner of my smoking-table, and when I saw it in a brown-paper parcel on my return to my chambers I could not think what it was until I cut the strings. ”

“ I really believe that, excepting Geneviève's apartments, no room in the house was so free from the perfume of tobacco as this one. It was a queer chaos of odds and ends, hung with threadbare tapestry. A sweet-toned old spinet in good repair stood by the window. There were stands of weapons, some old and dull, others bright and modern, festoons of Indian and Turkish armour over the mantel, two or three good pictures, and a pipe-rack. It was here that we used to come for new sensations in smoking. ”

“ The box is filled from the mouth at the hole in the upper side.
means of a slight blow cause wreaths several inches in diameter, exhibiting the structural details of the liquid rings, to shoot out to a considerable distance. A soap-bubble filled with smoke produces similar effects when it bursts; and a cubic box made of playing-cards (Fig. 5) will enable us to study, with the help of tobacco-smoke, how little influence the shape of the opening has upon the rings which we drive out through the hole at which we have tilled the box. We may make the hole square or rectangular ”

“ There seems to be as great a variety of design in snuff-boxes as among pipes and tobacco-stoppers. The Indians of both North and South America have their mills for grinding or pulverizing the leaves. In the East a great variety of snuff-boxes may be seen; they are made of wood and ivory, while many of them have a spoon attached to the box, which they use in taking the dust from the box to the back of the hand, whence it is taken by the forefinger and conveyed to the nose. In Europe we find greater variety of design in snuff-boxes than in the East. ”

“ Cigars break and peel in the kneading motion of walking and crouching. But the cigarette is protected in its little box. And yet, rather than lose a smoke, a soldier will carry one lonesome cigarette, rained on and limp and fraying at the end, drag it from the depths of a kit, dry it out, and have a go. For, after all, [Pg 102] it isn't for theoretical advantages over larger, longer smokes he likes it, but because it is fitted to his temperament. It is a French and Belgian smoke, short-lived and of a light touch, as dear to memory and liking as the wines of La Champagne. ”

“ Another writer of this time speaks of one pipe of tobacco sufficing "three or four men at once."
The rich young gallant carried about with him his tobacco apparatus (often of gold or silver) in the form of tobacco-box, tobacco-tongs—wherewith to lift a [27] live coal to light his pipe, ladle "for the cold snuffe into the nosthrill," and priming-iron. Sometimes the tobacco-box was of ivory; and occasionally a gallant would have looking-glass set in his box, so that when he took it out to obtain tobacco, he could at the same time have a view of his own delectable person. ”

“ He knew just what he wanted and where to get it He had seen it in a shop window—a gold box marvellously inlaid with enamel. It would do for a show thing until the boy grew up, and then it would do for his cigarette-box—the young beggar. The idea amused him. He was even a little proud of it. He explained it to the salesman who bowed towards him deferentially. What was the good of giving babies expensive toys which they broke, or ridiculous mugs which they didn't know what to do with when they grew up? But a swagger cigarette-box—gold and enamel—that would be something to grow up for! ”

“ If it is to be a wooden one, select or make a box of such a size as to suit your pocket or satchel, and cover the bottom, and lid too if the depth allows of it, with sheet cork or slices of good wine corks, about one-eighth of an inch thick, fixed on with glue.
The metal box is not quite so easy, but even here you may save yourself much work by keeping your eyes open. Very neat little collecting boxes can be made out of the flat metal boxes in which are sold certain favourite brands of tobacco. ”