Tobacco field

“ The tobacco fields are kept in the best possible condition, no weeds or grass is allowed to grow and (p. 313) the entire surface is as free from stones as a lawn. He usually, if his farm is small, plants the same field year after year, securing a much finer leaf and by yearly manuring keeping the ground fertile and in good condition. When the tobacco is stripped the utmost care is taken to assort the leaves and he frequently shades or assorts the colors, obtaining fancy prices for such "selections." ”

“ Virginia Tobacco Field, 1620.
"Tobacco and Indian Corne are planted in hills as hops, and secured by worm fences, which are made of rails supporting one another very firmly in a particular manner. Tobacco requires a great deal of skill and trouble in the right management of it. They raise the plants in beds, as we do Cabbage plants; which they transplant and replant upon occasion after a shower of rain, which they call a season. When it is grown up they top it, or nip off the head, succour (p. 052) it, or cut off the ground leaves, weed it, hill it ”

“ Fairholt says:—
"The time of harvesting the leaves is an interesting period for a stranger to visit the villages, which put on a new aspect as every house and barn is hung all over with the drying leaves."
German Tobacco Field.
German tobacco cures well, and some of the finer sorts make excellent cigar wrappers and are much esteemed throughout Europe. ”

“ Today it is grown in many states and almost every land, but the United States raises more than any other country, and when we speak of the wealth of our nation, we must include tobacco because its sale here and abroad brings in vast sums of money.
Tobacco seeds are as small as grains of sand, and we BERRY WAGON BOYS have held in our hands enough seeds to furnish plants for a large plantation. A field of tobacco is a beautiful sight, for the plants grow quite high and have huge, smooth, dark green leaves. ”

“ The tobacco fields or plantations are very large, and together with the vast sheds for curing, the fields present a beautiful appearance; the long straight rows with their dark green leaves adding not a little to the beauty and variety of the landscape. The great growers of the plant are very careful in cultivating the fields and give the tobacco frequent hoeings, until ready to be gathered and taken to the sheds. ”

“ The grounds selected for the cultivation of tobacco are called by various names even in the same countries. Thus in the Connecticut Valley, such lands are called tobacco fields, at the South they are known as tobacco plantations, while in Cuba they are called Vegas or tobacco farms. In Cuba almost the entire tobacco farm is planted to tobacco while at the South and in New England this is rarely the case unless the plantations or tobacco farms are small and contain but a few acres. ”

“ The members are constantly rolling cigarettes with deft fingers, and the people in the galleries do the same, so that a cloud of gray vapor always hangs over the body, and in the dark corners of the chamber one can see the glow of burning tobacco like the flash of fire-flies. But cigars are never used, nor pipes, and no one chews tobacco. ”

“ He says—"No gentleman in those days was seen smoking even a 'weed' in the streets. Cigarettes were practically unheard of in England, and outside one's private smoking-room pipes were tabooed. Men in Society slunk into their smoking-rooms, or, when there was no smoking-room, into the kitchen or servants' hall, after the domestics had retired. A smoking-jacket was worn in the place of their ordinary evening coat, and their well-oiled, massive head of hair was protected by a gorgeously decorated smoking-cap. Thus the odour of tobacco was not brought into the drawing-room." ”

“ Taking a general survey of army medical officers’ reports of work done in the hospital-camps, he finds evidence in abundance supporting the view that tobacco-smoking does in some indefinable way mitigate suffering and help to a speedy recovery. ”

“ My own taste inclines to the German receiver, long cherry tube and amber, and to my own garden, for all street smoking is unæsthetic, and the traveller by coach, boat, or rail has the tastes of others to consult. Surely it is not urbane to throw on another the burden of saying that he likes not the smell or the inhaling of burning tobacco. Better postpone your solace to more fitting time and place—the close of day and your own veranda. Indoor smoking is detestable. Life has few direr disenchanters than the morning smells of obsolete tobacco, relics though they be of hesternal beatitude. ”

“ On the march our men would cut a bamboo, and on reaching camp would borrow some suitable tool from us, and make a pipe in a very short time. They were sufficiently accomplished smokers, however, to like an old “Bau-bau” best, and gave the reason, which will be appreciated by every smoker, that tobacco is not good in a new one. ”

“ They both chew and smoke tobacco, but they do not use pipes for smoking; they roll up the tobacco in a strip of dried leaf, take three or four whiffs, emitting the smoke through their nostrils, and then they extinguish it. ”

“ The smoker lights his pipe, and then lies prone on the ground, and after puffing a portion of smoke to each cardinal point and muttering a prayer, he swallows several mouthfuls of tobacco smoke, which produces intoxication and partial insensibility, lasting perhaps for the space of two minutes. ”

“ The damp, warm odour of the tobacco in the long, low-roofed rooms is in itself almost stupefying. But there is no ventilation, and the atmosphere is absolutely indescribable. Many of the girls smoke cigarettes at their work. ”

“ In Sandwich and in Boston the fine for 'drinking tobacco in the meeting-house' was 5s. for each drink, which I take to mean chewing tobacco rather than smoking it; many men were fined for thus drinking, and solacing the weary hours, though doubtless they were as sly and kept themselves as unobserved as possible. Four Yarmouth [66] men—old sea-dogs, perhaps, who loved their pipe—were in 1687 fined 4s. each for smoking tobacco around the end of the meeting-house. ”

“ Now and then the curious and hungry approach to note with what skill or speed the cookery is progressing, but they are content to look on at a respectful distance and to make suggestions and criticisms, but not to interfere with aid. The epicurean smoker, who holds that the finest flavor of tobacco is evoked only by coal or blazing splinter, steals down upon the windward side and snatches a reluctant ember or an elusive flame that flickers out on the brink of the pipe bowl, but most who burn the weed are content now to kindle it with the less fervid flame of a match. ”

“ Always at morning, noon and night, comes the inevitable box of parporos, and everybody at the table smokes and drinks their coffee at the same time. On the cars are fixed little cups for cigar ashes in every seat. Ladies frequently take out their part parporos, and hand them to the gentlemen with a pretty invitation to smoke. Instead of having a smoking car as we do, they have a car for those who are so 'pokey' as not to smoke."
Throughout the German States the custom of smoking is universal and tobacco enters largely into their list of expenditures. ”

“ If a winged inhabitant of some remote world felt the impulse to traverse space, and, with an astronomical map, to fly round our planetary system, he would at once recognize the earth by the odor of tobacco which it exhales, forasmuch as all known nations smoke the nicotian herb. And thousands and thousands of men, if compelled to limit themselves to a single nervous aliment, would relinquish wine and coffee, opium and brandy, and cling fondly to the precious narcotic leaf. Before Columbus, tobacco was not smoked except in America ”

“ Between these boothes the people push, press, and jostle, so that if one is not in danger of one's life, one is at all events nearly suffocated as the smell of the meat mingles with the fumes of bad tobacco. I have even seen boys of ten years old walk about with short pipes in their mouths, and the smoke hangs over the market-place like a heavy fog; the lungs that can stand it must really be strong as healthy. I nearly fainted. Those great strong fellows would not stir a step out of my way. Fortunately my friend of the Küchelberg and his Liese came to my rescue, just when I most needed it. ”

“ Hungarians, Poles, Croats, Wallachians, Jews, Moldavians, Greeks, Turks, all dressed in their national and stinking costumes, promenade up and down, smoking all, and none exciting the slightest observation. Every third window is a pipe-shop, and they [presumably the pipes] show, by their splendour and variety, the expensiveness of the passion. Some of them are marked '200 dollars.' The streets reek with tobacco-smoke. You never catch a breath of untainted air within the Glacis. ”

“ On a summer's night, windows are thrown open, and groups of swarthy mustachio'd men are seen by the passer-by lounging at the casements, and smoking fearfully. Sounds of gruff voices practising vocal music invade the evening's silence, and the fumes of choice tobacco scent the air. ”

“ Smoking is to some extent gradually replacing betel-nut chewing, especially with the children, who now take to the weed when they are about five or six years old. The native tobacco is very strong, and when smoked as a cigarette wrapped in dried banana-leaf, it is decidedly unpalatable to the European. Light cigarette tobaccos of foreign manufacture are now much in vogue. Those who can afford it, roll up the tobacco in lotus leaf. ”

“ The tobacco farms, with their myriad tobacco leaves drying and rotting from green into yellow, became ill-kept and untidy, the peasants harvesting them surly and unwashed: the sky spread over them no glamour. ”

“ The German china bowl with globular receiver of the essential oil, the absorbent meerschaum, the red Turkish bell-shaped clay, the elaborate hookah,—a really elegant ornament, and perhaps the most healthful and rational form of smoking,—pipes of all shapes, began to fill the shops of London. Coleridge, when cured of opium, took to snuff. Byron wrote dashingly about 'sublime Tobacco,' but I do not think he carried the practice to excess. Shelley never smoked, nor Wordsworth, nor Keats. Campbell loved a pipe. John Gibson Lockhart was seldom without a cigar. ”

“ What wood they have occasion for they carry off, and burn the rest, or let it lie and rot upon the ground. The land between the logs and stumps they hoe up, planting tobacco there in the spring, inclosing it with a slight fence of cleft rails. This will last for tobacco some years, if the land be good; as it is where fine timber, or grape vines grow. Land when hired is forced to bear tobacco by penning their cattle upon it; but cowpen tobacco tastes strong, and that planted in wet marshy land is called nonburning tobacco, which smoaks in the pipe like leather, unless it be of a good age. ”

“ Everything is dim with tobacco smoke, but otherwise as clean as soap and sand can make it.
Next, picture two sleepy, shabby-looking men, in wooden shoes, seated near the glowing fireplace, hugging their knees and smoking short, stumpy pipes ”

“ Strange as it may appear, there are some confirmed smokers in Cuba who never use cigars at all, but confine themselves to cigarettes. To the New Yorker it looks curious to see a great, bearded man smoking a tiny cigarette; and, indeed were he to smoke his cigarette as the New Yorker would smoke his cigar, it would be labor lost, so far as getting any effect of the tobacco was concerned. ”

“ YOUNG SMOKERS.
Some boys, nowadays, would gladly undergo the “flogging” if they could be permitted to enjoy a smoke afterwards.
There are but few people inhabiting the eastern coast, and following fishing for a vocation, who do not smoke or chew tobacco; and their wives and children also smoke.
Sailors are proverbially addicted to smoking and chewing. Their love of tobacco far exceeds their appetite for grog. ”

“ In America, where I spent many happy years, I was never without “a smoke,” a habit I still continue, though with the disadvantage of having to substitute British for the fragrant Oronoko and Perique tobaccos. This latter is, in my estimation, whether used as cigar, cigarette, or in a pipe, the finest tobacco in the world. I have discovered, beyond doubt, that a person afflicted with obesity is affected by the smallest transgression of the strict regimen. ”

“ The West Greenlanders prepare their chewing tobacco in a way which to us seems somewhat surprising. A deep Danish porcelain pipe is half-filled with smoking-tobacco, which is then thoroughly drenched with water, after which the pipe is filled to the brim with dry tobacco ”

“ Stud rolled back the doors of the tobacco shed on creaking rollers and the men flowed in through the wide, dark opening, went up among the beams, began methodically and rapidly to lower the heavily-laden laths of tobacco to the men below who piled them log-cabin fashion on the dirt floor. Not a moment could be lost. Tobacco leaves which had been as brittle as spun glass five hours before were now as pliable as brown satin. Before a cold wind could lift the fog, again freezing the leaves, the men must pile and protect tons of tobacco. ”

“ Inhalation is harmful because it not only exposes the absorbent tissues of the mouth and upper throat to the smoke, but thrusts the smoke throughout the throat, lungs, and nose, all of which are lined with a specially sensitive membrane of great absorptive capacity. Thus from the smoke of the cigarette the system takes up many times as much poison as it takes up from the uninhaled smoke of the pipe or cigar. Indeed, it may be added that the purer and higher the grade of the tobacco, the more harmful it is to the smoker, for the more will it tempt him into inhalation. ”