Tobacco pouch

“ Aside from his pipes and cigar-holders, he had provided himself with a self-lighting match-safe for his vest-pocket, a self-closing rubber chewing-tobacco pouch that kept the tobacco clean and moist, and other things that appealed to his sense of cleanliness. His efforts had always been to do away with the filthy part connected with its use. In fact, he had often been commended for his neatness in regard to his tobacco; but when God said that it was unclean and unfit for the use of any one who was seeking to be on the highway to Heaven, he did not care for it at all. ”

“ The tobacco is of many kinds, both Russian and American, and when the stock of it is finished native substitutes are used. Preference is given to the sweet, strong chewing tobacco, which sailors generally use. In order to make the tobacco sweet which has not before been drenched with molasses, the men are accustomed, when they get a piece of sugar, to break it down and place it in the tobacco-pouch. ”

“ It seemed to come natural to other persons to present me with new tobacco-pouches, until I had nearly a score lying neglected in drawers. But I am not the man to desert an old friend that has been with me everywhere and thoroughly knows my ways. Once, indeed, I came near to being unfaithful to my tobacco-pouch, and I mean to tell how—partly as a punishment to myself.
The incident took place several years ago. Gilray and I had set out on a walking tour of the Shakespeare country; but we separated at Stratford, which was to be our starting-point, because he would not wait for me. ”

“ Each boy carries his own tobacco-pouch, matches, and tobacco, and is an adept at rolling cigarettes. They are thoroughly unselfish as regards the disposal of their smoking material, and a cigarette will be circulated amongst a group of friends, each one taking a whiff or two and then handing it on to his neighbour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The smoker lays his head upon a pillow, has a lamp by his side, and with a kind of needle he lifts a small portion of the opium to the candle; and having ignited it, he puts it into the small aperture of the bowl of the pipe. The candle is applied to the bowl during the process of inhaling, and the smoke is drawn into the lungs in the same manner as an Indian or Chinese swallows tobacco. A whiff or two is all that can be drawn from a single pipe, and, therefore, those who are accustomed to the use of the drug have frequently to renew the dose. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Besides allowing one to inhale, a cigarette engenders more muscular unrest than any other kind of smoke. Because of its shortness, cheapness, and convenience, one lights a cigarette, throws it away, and then lights another. This spasmodic process, constantly repeated, increases the smoker’s restlessness while at the same time satisfying it with a feeling that he is doing something. Yet despite the fact that cigarette-smoking is the worst form of tobacco addiction, virtually all boys who smoke start with cigarettes. ”

“ If much smoke is taken into the lungs, it irritates the delicate linings and tends to clog them up. Tobacco smoke also contains the poison nicotine, which is absorbed into the blood. For these reasons the cigarette user who inhales the smoke does himself great harm, injuring his nervous system and laying the foundation for diseases of the air passages. The practice of smoking indoors is likewise objectionable, since every one in a room containing the smoke is compelled to breathe it.
Alcohol and Diseases of the Lungs.—Pneumonia is a serious disease of the lungs caused by germs. ”

“ While there are smokers of cigars and pipes who inhale their smoke, it will almost always be found upon investigation that they acquired the habit of inhalation through smoking cigarettes. The average man with a cigarette history gets no pleasure [Pg 164] out of smoke which he does not inhale.
Even if a cigarette is made of the best tobacco, undrugged, and wrapped in the purest of rice-paper, the mere fact that the smoke is almost invariably inhaled suffices to make cigarette-smoking the most harmful form of the tobacco habit. ”

“ The manufactured American cigarette seems to be especially deadly in its effect. It is said to contain five and one-half per cent. of nicotine, or more than twice as much as the Cuban-made cigarette contains, and more than six times as much as is contained in the Turkish cigarette.
I am not going to quarrel with the use of tobacco in general by mature men. He who has come to man's estate is free to decide for himself whether he shall force a poison on his revolting stomach ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am a firm believer in tobacco as a preventive, more particularly in the shape of cigarettes, and in this I have every one against me. A pipe, I think, is half poisonous in itself on account of the nicotine, and, after experimenting with pipe, cigar, and cigarette, I truly believe the cigarette to be the least harmful, and, as a preventive of malarial fevers, the best remedy. I felt particularly well amidst all these fever-stricken people. ”

“ Finding all his attempts to trade of no avail, he shrugged his shoulders again, pulled up his box a little higher on his back, and, becoming bon camarade on the instant, offered me his box full of choice foreign tobacco, and suggested a friendly pipe as the best alleviation of the toils of the way; a proposition to which I readily agreed, for, young as I was, I had learnt the art of smoking. ”

“ One of the occupants of the room is a "mere boy of nineteen or twenty, who, though it was yet barely ten o'clock, was drinking gin and water, and smoking a cigar, amusements to which, judging from his inflamed countenance, he had devoted himself pretty constantly for the last year or two of his life." Tobacco-smoke pervades the Fleet prison. In fact, to trace tobacco through the pages of "Pickwick" is to realize vividly how vulgar if not vicious an accomplishment smoking was considered by the fashionable world and how popular it was among the nobodies of the unfashionable world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the almost universal custom of those addicted to the cigarette to inhale the smoke, which is the exception with the pipe and cigar smoker. But nicotine is not the only poison generated in the cigarette even where tobacco is not combined with opium or other drugs used to contribute to its flavor and aroma; the combustion of tobacco with the rice paper in which it is rolled makes a compound which is neither tobacco smoke nor paper smoke, but an alkaloid known as acrolein, “the name of which is known to all scientists and the smell of which is known to everyone.” ”

“ 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 cigar-smoker absorbs more poison than the cigarette-smoker, and the latter in turn than those who smoke pipes, while the smoker who takes the precaution of using a narghilie, or any other apparatus which conducts the smoke through water, reduces the deleterious effects of tobacco to a minimum. ”

“ A small amount of tobacco is then introduced, about enough to give one or two puffs, and a piece of tinder being placed at the edge, fire is struck with a flint and steel. The smoker is now ready to enjoy himself; he takes a long pull and then tries to swallow the smoke, but lower down there is an objection; the stomach refuses to be considered a smoke bag, and, puckering up, does all in its power to repel the intrusion, while above the act of swallowing is persisted in. ”

“ Cigarettes are still more injurious than cigars because of the smoke from their paper coverings; also, because from the way they are made, more of the tobacco poison goes into the lungs. The cheap cigarette which boys use is made from cast-away cigar stumps and other filthy things. ”

“ Smokers keep on finding chewers disgusting, and smokers of pipes and cigars frequently object to the odor of cigarettes.
Nothing more strikingly illustrates how addicted people may become to a habit than the smoking and chewing of the traditional Southern gentleman of the old school, whom any other [Pg 141] personal uncleanliness would have horrified. Young men most fastidious about their apparel seem quite unaware that it is saturated with the smell of tobacco. The odor of a cigarette is probably as offensive to some of those who do not smoke as any other smell under heaven. ”

“ In using tobacco we take the poison into the tissues. The chewer and the snuffer get the effect through the tissue with which the tobacco comes in contact. The cigarette-smoker almost [Pg 147] invariably inhales, and he gets the most harm merely because the bronchial mucous membrane absorbs the poison most rapidly. The tobacco itself is no more harmful than it is in a pipe or a cigar. Indeed, it is often less so in the cheaper grades, for, being less pure, it contains less nicotine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every man carries a small bag called a tuffio, in his knapsack, in which is his pipe and tobacco, and the women have their tuffio in their wrappers, carrying their pipes in their hands. They prepare their tobacco for smoking by straining out its juice while quite green, and they informed us by signs that it would otherwise make them drunk. ”

“ Every physician knows that the agreeable sensations that tempt to the use of tobacco are caused by nicotine, which is a rank poison, as much so as prussic acid or arsenic. When smoked, the poison is absorbed by the blood of the mouth, and carried to the brain. When chewed, the nicotine passes234 to the blood through the mouth and stomach. In both cases, the whole nervous system is thrown into abnormal excitement to expel the poison, and it is this excitement that causes agreeable sensations. ”

“ Now, the man who smokes a clay pipe is not only—as a rule—a heavy smoker, but he smokes strong and dark-coloured tobacco. And if he wears a dental plate, that plate becomes encrusted with a black deposit which is very difficult to remove. There is, as you see, no trace of any such deposit, or of any tobacco stain in the interstices of the teeth. It appeared to be almost certainly the plate of a non-smoker. But if that were so, it could not be Reed's. But it had been ascertained by the police surgeon that it fitted the jaw of the skull and undoubtedly belonged to the burned body. ”

“ Hereward the Wake.—Yes! tobacco-chewing is exceedingly injurious. Tobacco contains a large quantity of nicotine, a highly poisonous substance. When tobacco is chewed, this nicotine is taken into the stomach and absorbed. ”

“ No one answered, and Etta said:—
"Boys think it manly to smoke, but it isn't. It's very dirty and very unhealthy. I heard of a little boy only twelve years old, who died very suddenly, and when the doctors examined him after his death they found the coats of his stomach all eaten up with tobacco, and yet he had only smoked cigarettes. Cigarettes are made of a little tobacco, a great deal of cabbage-leaves, old leather, and dirty paper, with snuff and ginger and strychnine, a deadly poison, to flavor them. The oil of tobacco itself is rank poison. ”

“ But many of the spots—which some smokers look for—are put on artificially.”
“What about smoking tobacco and snuff?” asked Darry.
“And cigarettes?” put in Hockley.
“Smoking tobaccoes are nothing more than tobacco leaves cut up in various ways and snuff is tobacco ground up. The smoking tobaccoes are flavored with a hundred and one different things and chemicals are often used to keep them moist, and this [121] treatment is also true of chewing tobacco. Some snuffs are allowed to rot before being used and others are baked, and many of them are perfumed. ”