The weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1878-1881, 1880-12-28

James Parton has recently written a letter,
which has had wide quotation, exhorting
Writors and brain workers to throw away their
.nipos. This reopens the discussion of a social
8eopic which affords the largest room for hon
1est divergence of opinion. Suppose, without
attempting to decidethe mooted point asto the
soundness Of Mr.. Partcn's advice, we indulge
4 few random observations on the promi-
nence Of the pipe in literature. Mr.. Parton's
counsel to brain workers may be wise or not,
but that he is in a minority is a fact OF which
there can be little question. The consump-
tion of tobacco increases yearly, n to this
increase brain workers, we believe, contribute
. very large proportion. English literature,
~ q whole, may be said to be surcharged with
smoke. Anti-tobacconists can point, it IS
true, TO the fact that Shakespeare's pages do
not contain a single reference to the weed.
But this notable exception serves to empha-
size the rule. Lord Bacon eulogizes tobacco,
declaring that 'it comforteth the spirits and
dischareeth WEAKNESS, which it worketh
partly BY opening but chiefly by the opiate
virtue which condenseth the spirits" Ben
johnson and Drummond, and Fletcher and
Beaumont constantly renewed their friend
ships over a pipe. The great DR.. Barrow
pronounced his pipe to be a cure all, his Pan
pharmacon. Sir Thomas Overbury calls
smoking "that delectable pastime." Boxbole,
the great Dutch scholar, smoked almost III
cessantly in his study. Sir Isaac Newton not
only loved his pipe, but had a playful and
somewhat ungallant way of using the fingers
Of his lady friends for shoppers. Steele wrote
his splendid essays with a pipe IN his mouth,
and Addison sent out his brightest things
from a cloud of smoke. Dryden loved his
sswhiff'' only second to his "pinch," and Con-
greve was fond of a soothing long-stemmed
clay-the .church warden" of the olden
time. Daniel Defoe made his pipe his near
est friend. All the literary men of Queen
Anne day appear wreathed in fragrant
clouds, and no period, surely, has given us a
greater number of great writers. Charles
Lamb was long a devotee of the weed, before
he wrote his celebrated "Farewell Tobacco"
in which he mathematical it as "flth O the
mouth and fob O. the mind"
Coming down to later times, we find the
example of Sir Walter Scott, the prince of
romancers, on the same side. His novels are
full of tobacco. His characters are continu-
ally shutting or smoking. Dominic Sampson
heard Meg Merrilies singing on the stairs and
groaned deeply, "puting out between whites
huge volumes of tobacco smoke" He makes
the old hag herself a disciple of the weed,
introducing her to Harry Bertram "busily
engaged with a short black tobacco pipe"
Shelley, Edgar Poe and Tom Moore are three
modem poets who are to be set down on the
other hand as anti-tobact onists. Macauley,
we think, may be added to the number. In
our owl day Dickens and TennysOn, who
stand, at least in popular estimation, as the
English laureates of prose and poetry, respec-
lively, are to be set down as ardent lovers of
nicotine comfort. Spurge0n has preached
some eloquent sermons in defense ofthe pipe,
declaring on one occasion that he had always
smoked and always intended to .'smoke to
the glory of God" On this side we think we
shall not err in setting Town Longfellow,
Lowell, Aldrich and Clemens, at, least, as
disciples of Sir Walter'Raleigh. Oliver Wen
dell Holmes, if he follows his own advice to
young men, must be set Town as of a contrary
mind.
Mr.. Be1cher is not attached to the weed,
but a Boston clergyman, whose fame once
almost rivaled that of the Brooklyn pastor,
was deeply devoted to it. eff you want to
find ou5 if Mr.. - is in his study you need
not ring the bell, but just look and see if the
smoke is pouring out Of the window" one OF
his deacons was wont to say to people who
wanted to see him.-Boston Traveller.