Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1870-04-14

| stones in sling.
WORK IN YOUR OWN HARNESS.
[Packard's Monthly.
The Spittoon.
From Harper's Bazaar.
Itmay lie within the recollection OF
son& of our older countrymen and coun-
| try@omen, if their memorials have not
been. happily spared what was by nc
| means specially worthy of record, that
| in times p0t a succession of English
travellers Tsited and summarily de-
uounced our country. These were the
Hsmiltons, Halls, Trollgpes, and Fidlers
-names all of which might have been
totally forgotten had not some of them
| been rescued from immediate oblivion
by the more honorable literary ambition
of their descendants. These travellers
| came and saw, what all now acknowl-
edge to be, II great country and we
even then believed to be1hanifesting in
its daily life, if SOMEWHAT rude. the sure
developmenY of 3 high civilization
With the telling facts OF human vigor,
co operating dh aatural fertility and a
nation OF wibhsg laborers, fast spreading
over and cultivatihg broad dominion
Hall, Trollope, anddfidler had little else
apparently to report OH their return to
England than that t1e whole of America
was but one great n''spittoon,n and all
the Americans people who were chiefly
occupied in spittingfpto it.
we were In our comparative weakness
an irritable race In thase days, and nat
urally showed indignation where con-
tempt would have been more proper.
We got angry with, while we should
have despised, on their own account, a
set of writers whose eyes were ever open
to our faults and shut to our virtues, and
for our own sake accepted the correc-
Lion, however ungraciously administer
ed. With increased strength we have
less irritability, and can now, with a
manly fortitude, listen to the proof and
bear the chastisement of our national
vices.
We venture accordingly to invoke
from the shades of oblivion the Halls,
Hamiltons, Trollopes, and Fidlers to re-
sumo their appropriate and congenial
work of abusing the American spitters,
and to wipe up, if they can, their foul
driveling. With all our genuine pro-
gress in refinement, the disgusting
habit of "expectoration" still clings to so
many OF our people as to be almost ma
tional. The universally Of smoking
may have diffused the practice more
generally, and made Europeans less in
nocent of a charge which they formerly
exclusively laid against us; but be this
as it may, we are still, par erceuence,
the splitting nation.
We in this country seem so enslaved
to the habit, though conscious of its
vileness, We have ingeniously striven to
eXalt 1T by a magniloquent word, and
made special and Ostentacious provision
for its public exercise, rather than WELD
it up to the disgust it merits. Erpec-
tordte, with all its Latin sonorousness,
has been expressly borrowed from the
learned jargon of the doctors, and the
sptttoon, polished, silvered, and elabor-
ately painted with flowers and butter
flies, set up in drawing-rooms, legisla-
tive halls, libraries. and museums of
art and science, for the behoof of Amer
lean spitters and their abettors. No
one can approach richIy-robed dame
or marble statue, or step or carpet or
tesselated pavement, without being
reminded by special provision for its
exercise, or, in the absence OF such. dis
gustingly made conscious of the prevail
ing American propensity.
The use Of tobacco is not alone respon
sible for the disgusting habit of splitting
This is acquired by people who were
never guilty of rolling d cud or pulling
a cigar, in early youth. from careless
ness of education, and preserved in
through life. The act is not seldom
preceded by q sOnOrous preliminary
known to American diction as ho,Uking
"a disgustful practice so common in
the country that our people have been
supposed to be universally affected with
a congenital bronchitis, or an affection
of the throat from birth. Our public
assemblies, theatres, and even churches,
so re- echo with this national habit of
hemming, coughing and splitting, that
each place, ut times, would seem to be
from the sound hut Il hospital for the
incurables of consumption.
The saliva has its part, and an import
ant one, in the economy of life. 1t is a
fluid essential not only by its moisture
mechanically to dissolve and facilitate
the swallowing of food, but it possesses
certain chemical constituents necessary
for its assimilation. No animal body
can he well nourished without a due
supply of properly constituted saliva.
This. therefore, should be no more
thrown away thar any other useful ele-
ment of our complicated life and struct-
ure. The habit of often and copiously
ejecting it is not only directly injurious
by wasting a material wantedi for the
uses of digestion, but indirectly harmful
by stimulating the action of the organs
which have the property of secreting it,
and consequently the fluid is greatly in
creased in quantity and deteriorated in
quality. An unnatural draft is thus
made upon the system to supply the
surplus required. to the manifest loss of
general vigor. The material, moreover,
being of inferior kind. is incapable of
fulfilling its destined purpose.
Thus we doubt not that excessive spit
ting. which is the source of disgust to
all, is cause of the disease of many.
There may be more affinity than most
suspect between the equally prevalent
and dyspepsia.
The habit is to be cured, like all of its
kind, by awakening the disgust of peo
pie TO its grossness, and their conscious
ness to the fact of its risk to health.
if there must be smokers.
should all learn, as most decent ones
now do, to puff their cigars with dry
Chewers should abandon their
cuds; for we can conceive of no means
by which they can adapt their habit to
the decencies of life. And wisel house,
keepers should not recognize the neces-
sity of an unnecessary practice by adj
mitting to their households, however
polished or adorned, the inevitable dis
gusting spittoon.
Faith In American Idea.