Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-08-10
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

THAT chap" said one man to an
other in . lowered voice, could write
an article about anything.
why" ne continued, "he could
write an article about a cuspidorl'
Well, why not?
The cuspidor, more vulgarly known
as spittoon, is an honest article, which
like many other honest articles, is on
the point of vanishing.
In a few years it will be extinct, ex-
cept in smoking cars, clubs and rev
other places where males congregste.
1t has been disappearing by degrees
from hotels, corridors of public build
ings and even sleeping cars.
The public has woken up to the fact
by and large, that uninhibited splitting
is a horrid habit, as one of the tobacco
ads suggests.
Daintiness rules, and all is we'll.
But something picturesque has van
ished from the American scene, and. II
you don't believe 1t, 1t simply shows
that YOU were not born In the great
West where men are men.
Plain and fancy splitting OF tobacco
Juice was for decades one OF the finest
accomplishments of the standardized
American male.
Small boys collected tags of chewing
tobacco, but the men chewed 1t.
And. chewing 1t, they perforce nae
to spit.
The word spit" is under the ban
too, but somehow to us, and no doubt
to many millions of others, it still re-
mains a more honest word than "ex-
pectorate," and no more offensive.
When Charles Dickens first came To
America the tobacco Juice marksn1an-
shin of the natives of these States,
as Walt Whitman called them, struck
him squarely between the eyes.
Dickens never got tired Of talking
about the splitting habits Of the Amer
leans.
His Martin Chuzzlewit" fairly swims
in nicotine, and the matter comes In
for mention in his American Notes.
He deeply offended many American
admirers by his rather frank appraisal
Of this habit.
They said that he should have cast
his eyes higher than the floor when he
came to a land blessed with the Grand
Canyon and Niagara Falls.
Dickens had grown to be great man,
however, by the time OF his first visit
to the United States, and he was
great man in a more civilized, very
much older, nation.
Just as England was the first to ban
the practice Of slavery, 50 it was first
to do away with the too visible presence
OF the spittoon.
The chewing of tobacco, as a matter
OF fact, never got the hold on the Eng
lish people that 1t did on the hardy
pioneers of America.
Why this was we leave to the an
thropologists, or maybe to the novel
lists. For, despite the fact that Dickens
took sundry jibeS at his American
cousins for their accurancy with tobac-
CO juice, there has as yet been no novel
based upon this interesting, though TO
some disgusting, habit.
The man who aspired for real pro-
ficiency in the art--and, in a way, It,
was that-never rested until he cou
hit a brass cuspidoF at 20 PAGES placed
in the middle Of red plush rug.
Just why the "gobboon" had be to
brass, and the carpet red. we do not
know, unless those were the favofite
materials and colorS Of the saloons OF
the period.
The word "gobboon," 1t may be stated
in passing, Is not to be found in dc
tionaries, but we use two IBIS" on the
theory of the spelling of "spittoon."
A man was fairly disgraced who
would get so much as a spot on the
rug And he had to be accurate from