Chapter VII: Conclusion (3)

But the life of John Leclerc was not to be limited. A power has stood here which by its freedom has set at defiance the customary calculation of the worldly-wise. In high places and in low the people are this night disturbed because of him who has dared to lift his voice in the freedom of the speech of God. In drawing-rooms odorous with luxury the man's name has mention, and the vulgarity of his liberated speech and courageous faith is a theme to move the wonder and excite the reprobation of hearts whose languid beating keeps up their show of life, --to what sufficient purpose expect me not to tell. His voice is loud and harsh to echo through these music-loving halls; it rends and tears, with almost savage strength, the dainty silences.

But busier tongues are elsewhere more vehement in speech; larger hearts beat faster indignation; grief and vulgarest curiosity are all manifesting themselves after their several necessity. In solitary places heroes pray throughout the night, wrestling like Jacob, agonizing like Saul, and with some of them the angel left his blessing; for some the golden harp was struck that soothed their souls to peace. Angels of heaven had work to do that night. Angels of heaven and hell did prove themselves that night in Meaux: night of unrest and sleeplessness, or of cruel dreaming; night of bloody visions, tortured by the apprehension of a lacerated body driven through the city streets, and of the hooting shouts of Devildom; night haunted by a gory image,--the defiled temple of the Holy Ghost.

Did the prospect of torture keep _him_ wakeful? Could the man bear the disgrace, the derision, shouting, agony? Was there nothing in this thought, that as a witness of Jesus Christ he was to appear next day, that should soothe him even unto slumber? Upon the silence of his guarded chamber let none but ministering angels break. Sacred to him, and to Him who watched the hours of the night, let the night go!

But here--his mother, Jacqueline with her--we may linger with these.

V.

When the old woman saw that it was Jacqueline Gabrie who stood waiting admittance, she opened the door wider, as I said; and the dark solemnity of her countenance seemed to be, by so much as a single ray, enlivened for an instant.

She at once perceived the tracts which Jacqueline had brought. Aware of this, the girl said,--

"I stayed to hear them read, after I heard that for the sake of the truth in them"--she hesitated--"this city will invite God's wrath to-morrow."

And she gave the papers to the old woman, who took them in silence.

By-and-by she asked,--

"Are you just home, Jacqueline?"

"Since sunset,--though it was nearly dark when I came in,"--she answered. "Victor Le Roy was down by the riverbank, and he read them for me."

"He wanted to get out of town, maybe. You would surely have thought it was a holiday, Jacqueline, if you could have seen the people. Anything for a show: but some of them might well lament. Did you want to know the truth he pays so dear for teaching? But you have heard it, my child."

"We all heard what he must pay for it, in the fields at noon. Yes, mother, I wanted to know."

"But if you shall believe it, Jacqueline, it may lead you into danger, into sad straits," said the old woman, looking at the young girl with earnest pity in her eyes.

She loved this girl, and shuddered at the thought of exposing her to danger.

Jacqueline had nursed her neighbor, Antonine, and more than once, after a hard day's labor, which must be followed by another, she had sat with her through the night; and she could pay this service only with love, and the best gift of her love was to instruct her in the truth. John and she had proved their grateful interest in her fortunes by giving her that which might expose her to danger, persecution, and they could not foresee to what extremity of evil.

And now the old woman felt constrained to say this to her, even for her love's sake,--"It may lead you into danger."

"But if truth is dangerous, shall I choose to be safe?" answered Jacqueline, with stately courage.

"It _is_ truth. It _will_ support him. Blessed be Jesus Christ and His witnesses! To-night, and to-morrow, and the third day, our Jesus will sustain him. They think John will retract. They do not know my son. They do not know how he has waited, prayed, and studied to learn the truth, and how dear it is to him. No, Jacqueline, they do not. But when they prove him, they will know. And if he is willing to witness, shall I not be glad? The people will understand him better afterward,--and the priests, maybe. 'I can do all things,' said he, 'Christ strengthening me'; and that was said long ago, by one who was proved. Where shall you be, Jacqueline?"

"Oh," groaned Jacqueline, "I shall be in the fields at work, away from these cruel people, and the noise and the sight. But, mother, where shall you be?"

"With the people, child. With him, if I live. Yes, he is my son; and I have never been ashamed of the brave boy. I will not be ashamed to-morrow. I will follow John; and when they bind him, I will let him see his mother's eyes are on him,--blessing him, my child!--Hark! how they talk through the streets!--Jacqueline, he was never a coward. He is strong, too. They will not kill him, and they cannot make him dumb. He will hold the truth the faster for all they do to him. Jesus Christ on his side, do you think he will fear the city, or all Paris, or all France? He does not know what it is to be afraid. And when God opened his eyes to the truth of his gospel, which the priests had hid, he meant that John should work for it,--for he is a working-man, whatever he sets about."

So this old woman tried, and not without success, to comfort herself, and sustain her tender, proud, maternal heart. The dire extremity into which she and her son had fallen did not crush her; few were the tears that fell from her eyes as she recalled for Jacqueline the years of her son's boyhood,--told her of his courage, as in various ways it had made itself manifest: how he had always been fearless in danger,--a conqueror of pain,--seemingly regardless of comfort,--fond of contemplation,--contented with his humble state,--kindly, affectionate, generous, but easily stirred to wrath by injustice, when manifested by the strong toward the weak,--or by cruelty, or by falsehood.

Many an anecdote of his career might she relate; for his character, under the pressure of this trial, which was as searching and severe a test of her faith as of his, seemed to illustrate itself in manifold heroic ways, all now of the highest significance. With more majesty and grandeur his character arose before her; for now in all the past, as she surveyed it, she beheld a living power, a capability, and a necessity of new and grand significance, and her heart reverenced the spirit she had nursed into being.

Removed to the distance of a prison from her sight, separated from her love by bolts and bars, and the wrath of tyranny and close-banded bigotry, he became a power, a hero, who moved her, as she recalled his sentence, and prophesied the morrow, to a feeling tears could not explain.

They passed the night together, the young woman and the old. In the morning Jacqueline must go into the field again. She was in haste to go. Leaving a kiss on the old woman's cheek, she was about to steal away in silence; but as she laid her hand upon the latch, a thought arrested her, and she did not open the door, but went back and sat beside the window, and watched the mother of Leclerc through the sleep that must be brief. It was not in her heart to go away and leave those eyes to waken upon solitude. She must see a helpful hand and hopeful face, and, if it might be, hear a cheerful human voice, in the dawning of that day.

She had not long to wait, and the time she may have lost in waiting Jacqueline did not count or reckon, when she heard her name spoken, and could answer, "What wilt thou? here am I."

Not in vain had she lingered. What were wages, more or less, that they should be mentioned, thought of, when she might give and receive here what the world gives not, and never has to give,--and what a mortal cannot buy, the treasure being priceless? Through the quiet of that morning hour, soothing words, and strong, she felt and knew to speak; and when at last she hurried away from the city to the fields, she was stronger than of nature, able to bear witness to the faith that speaks from the bewilderment of its distresses, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

Not alone had her young, frank, loving eyes enlivened the dreary morning to the heart of Leclerc's mother. Grace for grace had she received. And words of the hymn that were always on John's lips had found echo from his mother's memory this morning: they lodged in the heart of Jacqueline. She went away repeating,--

"In the midst of death, the jaws
Of hell against us gape.
Who from peril dire as this
Openeth us escape?
'Tis thou, O Lord, alone!
Our bitter suffering and our sin
Pity from thy mercy win,
Holy Lord and God!
Strong and holy God!
Merciful and holy Saviour!
Eternal God!
Let us not despair
For the fire that burneth there!
Kyrie, eleison!"

Jacqueline met Elsie on her way to the fields. But the girls had not much to say to each other that morning in their walk. Elsie was manifestly conscious of some great constraint; she might have reported to her friend what she had heard in the streets last night, but she felt herself prevented from such communication,--seemed to be intent principally on one thing: she would not commit herself in any direction. She was looking with suspicion upon Jacqueline. Whatever became of her soul, her body she would save alive. She was waking to this world's enjoyment with vision alert, senses keen. Martyrdom in any degree was without attraction to her, and in Truth she saw no beauty that she should desire it. It was a root out of dry ground indeed, that gave no promise of spreading into goodly shelter and entrancing beauty.

As to Jacqueline, she was absorbed in her heroic and exalted thoughts. Her heart had almost failed her when she said farewell to John's mother; tearfully she had hurried on her way. One vast cloud hung between her and heaven; darkly rolled the river; every face seemed to bear witness to the tragedy that day should witness.

Not the least of her affliction was the consciousness of the distance increasing between herself and Elsie Méril. She knew that Elsie was rejoicing that she had in no way endangered herself yet; and sure was she that in no way would Elsie invite the fury of avenging tyranny and reckless superstition.

Jacqueline asked her no questions,--spoke few words to her,--was absorbed in her own thoughts. But she was kindly in her manner, and in such words as she spoke. So Elsie perceived two things,--that she should not lose her friend, neither was in danger of being seized by the heretical mania. It was her way of drawing inferences. Certain that she had not lost her friend, because Jacqueline did not look away, and refuse to recognize her; congratulating herself that she was not the object of suspicion, either justly or unjustly, among the dreadful priests.

But that friend whose steady eye had balanced Elsie was already sick at heart, for she knew that never more must she rely upon this girl who came with her from Domrémy.

As they crossed the bridge, lingering thereon a moment, the river seemed to moan in its flowing toward Meaux. The day's light was sombre; the birds' songs had no joyous sound,--plaintive was their chirping; it saddened the heart to hear the wind,--it was a wind that seemed to take the buoyancy and freshness out of every living thing, an ugly southeast wind. They went on together,--to the wheat-fields together;--it was to be day of minutes to poor Jacqueline.

To be away from Meaux bodily was, it appeared, only that the imagination might have freer exercise. Yes,--now the people must be moving through the streets; shopmen were not so intent on profits this day as they were on other days. The priests were thinking with vengeful hate of the wrong to themselves which should be met and conquered that day. The people should be swiftly brought into order again! John in his prison was preparing, as all without the prison were.

The crowd was gathering fast. He would soon be led forth. The shameful march was forming. Now the brutal hand of Power was lifted with scourges. The bravest man in Meaux was driven through the streets,--she saw with what a visage,--she knew with what a heart. Her heart was awed with thinking thereupon. A bloody mist seemed to fall upon the environs of Meaux; through that red horror she could not penetrate; it shrouded and it held poor Jacqueline.

Of the faith that would sustain him she began once more to inquire. It is not by a bound that mortals ever clear the heights of God. Step by step they scale the eminences, toiling through the heavenly atmosphere. Only around the summit shines the eternal sun.

So she must now recall the words that Victor Le Roy read for her last night; and the words he spoke from out his heart,--these also. And she did not fear now, as yesterday, to ask for light. Let the light dawn,--oh, let it shine on her!

The mother of Leclerc had uttered mysterious words which Jacqueline took for truth; the light was joyful and blessed, and of all things to be desired, though it smote the life from one like lightning. She waited alone with faith, watching till it should come,--left alone with this beam glimmering like a moth through darkness!--for thus was a believer, or one who resolved on believing, left in that day, when he turned from the machinery of the Church, and stood alone, searching for God without the aid of priestly intervention.

VI.

There was something awful in such loneliness.

Jacqueline knew little of it until now, as she walked toward the fields, by the side of Elsie Méril.

She saw how she had depended on the priest of Domrémy, as he had been the lawgiver and the leader of her life. A spiritual life, to be sustained only by the invisible spirit, to be lived by faith, not in man, but in God, without intervention of saint or angel or Blessed Virgin,--was the world's life liberated by such freedom?

By faith, and not by sight, the just must live. Would He bow his heavens and come down to dwell with the contrite and the humble?

Wondrous strange it seemed,--incomprehensible,--more than she could manage or control. There are prisoners whose pardon proves the world too large for them: they find no rest until their prison-door is opened for them again.

Of this class was Elsie,--not Jacqueline. Elsie was afraid of freedom,--not equal to it,--unable to deal with it; satisfied with being a child, with being a slave, when it came to be a question whether she should accept and use her highest privilege and dignity. At this hour, and among all persuasions, you will find that Elsie does not stand alone. Little children there are, long as the world shall stand,--though not precisely such as we think of when we remember, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

It was enough for Elsie--it is enough for multitudes through all the reformations--that she had an earthly defence, even such as she relied on without trouble. She lived in the hour. She had never toiled to deliver her darling from the lions,--to redeem a soul from purgatory. She eased her conscience, when it was troubled, by such shallow discovery of herself as she deemed confession. She loved dancing, and all other amusements,--hated solitude, knew not the meaning of self-abnegation. And let her dance and enjoy herself!--some service to the body is rendered thereby. She might do greatly worse, and is incapable of doing greatly better. Will you stint the idiots of comfort,--or rather build them decent habitations, and even vex yourself to feed and clothe them, in reverent confidence that the Future shall surely take them up and bless them, unstop their ears, open their eyes, give speech to them and absolute deliverance?

There are others beside Elsie who congratulate themselves on non-committal,--they covet not the advanced and dangerous positions. Honorable, but dangerous positions! The head might be taken off, do you not see? And could all eternity compensate for the loss of time? Ah, the body might be mutilated,--the liberty restrained: as if, indeed, a man's freedom were not eternally established, when his enemies, howling around, must at least crucify him! as if a divine voice were not ever heard through the raging of the people, saying, "Come up higher!"

But a fern-leaf cannot grow into a mighty hemlock-tree. From the ashes of a sparrow the phoenix shall not rise. You will not to all eternity, by any artificial means, nor by a miracle, bring forth an eagle from a mollusk.

There was not a sadder heart in all those fields of Meaux than the heart of Jacqueline Gabrie. There was not a stronger heart. Not a hand labored more diligently. Under the broad-brimmed peasant-hat was a sad countenance,--under the peasant-dress a heavily burdened spirit. Silent, all day, she labored. She was alone at noon under the river-bordered trees, eating her coarse fare without zest, but with a conscience,--to sustain the body that was born to toil. But in the maelström of doubt and anxiety was she tossed and whirled, and she cared not for her life. To be rid of it, now for the first time, she felt might be a blessing. What purpose, indeed, had she? She turned her thought from this question, but it would not let her alone. Again and yet again she turned to meet it, and thus would surely have at length its satisfying answer.

John Leclerc might pass through this ordeal, as from the first she had expected of him. But she listened to the speech of many of her fellow-laborers. Some prophecies which had a sound incredible escaped them. She did not credit them, but they tormented her. They contended with one another. John, some foretold, would certainly retract. One day of public whipping would suffice. When the blood began to flow, he would see his duty clearer! The men were prophesying from the depths and the abundance of their self-consciousness. Others speculated on the final result of the executed sentence. They believed that the "obstinacy" and courage of the man would provoke his judges, and the executors of his sentence,--that with rigor they would execute it,--and that, led on by passion, and provoked by such as would side with the victim, the sentence would terminate in his destruction. Sooner or later, nothing but his life would be found ultimately to satisfy his enemies.

It might be so, thought Jacqueline Gabrie. What then? what then?--she thought. There was inspiration to the girl in that cruel prophecy. Her lifework was not ended. If Christ was the One Ransom, and it did truly fall on Him, and not on her, to care for those beloved, departed from this life, her work was still for love.

John Leclerc disabled or dead, who should care then for his aged mother? Who should minister to him? Who, indeed, but Jacqueline?

Living or dying, she said to herself, with grand enthusiasm,--living or dying, let him do the Master's pleasure! She also was here to serve that Master; and while in spiritual things he fed the hungry, clothed the naked, gave the cup of living water, visited the imprisoned, and the sick of sin, she would bind herself to minister to him and his old mother in temporal things; so should he live above all cares save those of heavenly love. She could support them all by her diligence, and in this there would be joy.

She thought this through her toil; and the thought was its own reward. It strengthened her like an angel,--strengthened heart and faith. She labored as no other peasant-woman did that day,--like a beast of burden, unresisting, patient,--like a holy saint, so peaceful and assured, so conscious of the present very God!

[To be continued.]

* * * * *

MIDSUMMER.

Around this lovely valley rise
The purple hills of Paradise.
Oh, softly on yon banks of haze
Her rosy face the Summer lays!
Becalmed along the azure sky,
The argosies of cloudland lie,
Whose shores, with many a shining rift,
Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift.

Through all the long midsummer-day
The meadow-sides are sweet with hay.
I seek the coolest sheltered seat
Just where the field and forest meet,--
Where grow the pine-trees tall and bland,
The ancient oaks austere and grand,
And fringy roots and pebbles fret
The ripples of the rivulet.

I watch, the mowers as they go
Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row;
With even stroke their scythes they swing,
In tune their merry whetstones ring;
Behind the nimble youngsters run
And toss the thick swaths in the sun;
The cattle graze; while, warm and still,
Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill,
And bright, when summer breezes break,
The green wheat crinkles like a lake.

The butterfly and humble-bee
Come to the pleasant woods with me;
Quickly before me runs the quail,
The chickens skulk behind the rail,
High up the lone wood-pigeon sits,
And the woodpecker pecks and flits.
Sweet woodland music sinks and swells,
The brooklet rings its tinkling bells,
The swarming insects drone and hum,
The partridge beats his throbbing drum.
The squirrel leaps among the boughs,
And chatters in his leafy house.
The oriole flashes by; and, look!
Into the mirror of the brook,
Where the vain blue-bird trims his coat,
Two tiny feathers fall and float.

As silently, as tenderly,
The down of peace descends on me.
Oh, this is peace! I have no need
Of friend to talk, of book to read:
A dear Companion here abides;
Close to my thrilling heart He hides;
The holy silence is His Voice:
I lie and listen, and rejoice.

TOBACCO.

"Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases! a good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used. But as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lauds, health: hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul!"--BURTON. _Anatomy of Melancholy_.

A delicate subject? Very true; and one which must be handled as tenderly as _biscuit de Sèvres_, or Venetian glass. Whichever side of the question we may assume, as the most popular, or the most right, the feelings of so large and respectable a minority are to be consulted, that it behooves the critic or reviewer to move cautiously, and, imitating the actions of a certain feline household reformer, to show only the _patte de velours_.

The omniscient Burton seems to have reached the pith of the matter. The two hostile sections of his proposition, though written so long since, would very well fit the smoker and the reformer of to-day. That portion of the world which is enough advanced to advocate reforms is entirely divided against itself on the subject of Tobacco. Immense interests, economical, social, and, as some conceive, moral, are arrayed on either side. The reformers have hitherto had the better of it in point of argument, and have pushed the attack with most vigor, yet with but trifling results. Smokers and chewers, _et id omne genus_, mollified by their habits, or laboring under guilty consciences, have made but a feeble defence. Nor in all this is there anything new. It is as old as the knowledge of the "weed" among thinking men,--in other words, about three centuries. The English adventurers under Drake and Raleigh and Hawkins, and the multitude of minor Protestant "filibusters" who followed in their train, had no sooner imported the habit of smoking tobacco, among the other outlandish customs which they brought home from the new Indies and the Spanish Main, than the higher powers rebuked the practice, which novelty and its own fascinations were rendering so fashionable, in language more forcible than elegant. The philippic of King James is so apposite that we may be pardoned for transcribing one oft-quoted sentence:--"But herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's good gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be wilfully corrupted by this stinking smoke.... A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmfull to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof neerest resembling the horrible Stygian smoake of the pit that is bottomless."[a]

[Footnote a: _Counterblast to Tobacco_.]

The Popes Urban VIII. and Innocent XII. fulminated edicts of excommunication against all who used tobacco in any form; from which we may conclude that the new habit was spreading rapidly over Christendom. And not only the successors of St. Peter, but those also of the Prophet, denounced the practice, the Sultan Amurath IV. making it punishable with death. The Viziers of Turkey spitted the noses of smokers with their own pipes; the more considerate Shah of Persia cut them entirely off. The knout greeted in Russia the first indulgence, and death followed the second offence. In some of the Swiss cantons smoking was considered a crime second only to adultery. Modern republics are not quite so severe.

It is not to be supposed that in England the royal pamphlet had its desired effect. For we find that James laid many rigid sumptuary restrictions upon the practice which he abominated, based chiefly upon the extravagance it occasioned,--the expenses of some smokers being estimated at several hundred pounds a year. The King, however, had the sagacity to secure a preëmption-right as early as 1620.

Yet how could the practice but have increased, when, as Malcolm relates the tradition, such men as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Hugh Middleton sat smoking at their doors?--for "the public manner in which it was exhibited, and the aromatic flavor inhaled by the passengers, exclusive of the singularity of the circumstance and the eminence of the parties," could hardly have failed to favor its dissemination.

The silver-tongued Joshua Sylvester hoped to aid the royal cause by writing a poem entitled, "Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered, (about their ears who idly idolize so base and barbarous a weed, or at least-wise overlove so loathsome a vanity,) by a volley of holy shot thundered from Mount Helicon." If the smoothness of the verses equalled the euphony of the title, this must have proved a moving appeal.

Stow contents himself with calling tobacco "a stinking weed, so much abused to God's dishonor."

Burton exhausts the subject in a single paragraph. Ben Jonson, though a jolly good fellow, was opposed to the habit of smoking. But Spenser mentions "divine tobacco." Walton's "Piscator" indulges in a pipe at breakfast, and "Venator" has his tobacco brought from London to insure its purity. Sweet Izaak could have selected no more soothing minister than the pipe to the "contemplative man's recreation."

As the new sedative gains in esteem, we find Francis Quarles, in his "Emblems," treating it in this serio-comic vein:--

"Flint-hearted Stoics, you whose marble eyes
Contemn a wrinkle, and whose souls despise
To follow Nature's too affected fashion,
Or travel in the regent walk of passion,--
Whose rigid hearts disdain to shrink at
fears,
Or play at fast-and-loose with smiles and
tears,--
Come, burst your spleens with laughter to
behold
A new-found vanity, which days of old
Ne'er knew,--a vanity that has beset
The world, and made more slaves than Mahomet,--
That has condemned us to the servile yoke
Of slavery, and made us slaves to smoke,
But stay! why tax I thus our modern
times
For new-born follies and for new-born
crimes?
Are we sole guilty, and the first age free?
No: they were smoked and slaved as well
as we.
What's sweet-lipped honor's blast, but
smoke? what's treasure,
But very smoke? and what's more smoke
than pleasure?"

Brand gives us the whole matter in a nutshell, in the following quaint epigram, entitled "A Tobacconist," taken from an old collection:--

"All dainty meats I do defy
Which feed men fat as swine;
He is a frugal man, indeed,
That on a leaf can dine.

"He needs no napkin for his hands
His fingers' ends to wipe,
That keeps his kitchen in a box,
And roast meat in a pipe."

And so on, the singers of succeeding years, _usque ad nauseam_,--a loathing equalled only by that of the earlier writers for the plant, now so lauded.

Tobacco-worship seems to us to culminate in the following stanza from a German song:--

"Tabak ist mein Leben,
Dem hab' ich mich ergeben, ergeben;
Tabak ist meine Lust.
Und eh' ich ihn sollt' lassen,
Viel lieber wollt' ich hassen,
Ja, hassen selbst eines Mädchens Kuss."

As it is with your sex, my dear Madam, that this question of Tobacco is to be mainly argued,--for, to your honor be it spoken, you have always been of the reformatory party,--let us hope, that, provided you have not read or translated the last verse, you have recovered your natural amiability, ruffled perhaps by this odious subject, and are prepared to believe us when we tell you that these opposite opinions cannot be wholly reconciled, and to follow us patiently while we attempt to show that a certain gentleman, introduced to your maternal ancestor at a very remote period of the world's history, is not so black as he is sometimes painted. Let us keep good-natured, at least, in this discussion; for we propose to settle it without taking off the gloves, as we intimated in the opening paragraph. Your patience will be much needed for the sad army of facts and figures which is to follow. Therefore it is but just that you should speak now, after these long sentences.

Your George will never smoke? Excuse me. _When_ he will smoke depends upon the precocity of his individual generation; and that increases in a direct ratio with time itself, in this country. Thus, to state the matter in an approximate inverse arithmetical progression, and dating the birth of "young America" about the year 1825,--previously to which reigned the dark ages of oldfogydom, so called,--we find as follows: --From 1825 to 1835, young gentlemen learned to smoke when from 25 to 20 years of age; from 1835 to 1845, young _gents_, ditto, ditto, from 20 to 15 years; 1845 to 1855, from 15 to 10; 1855 to 1865, 10 to 5; 1865 to 1875, 5 to 0; and, if we continue, 1875 to 1885, zero to minus: but really the question is becoming too nebulous. _Corollary_. In about ten years, the youth of the United States will smoke contemporaneously with the infant Burmese, who, we are credibly informed, begin the habit _aet_. 3, or as soon as they have cut enough teeth to hold a cigar.

Therefore, we will say, Madam, at some indefinite period of his childhood or youth,--for we would not be so impolite as to infer your age by asking that of your son,--the _susdit_ George will come home late from play some afternoon, languid, pale, and disinclined for tea. He will indignantly repel the accusation of feeling ill, and there will lurk about his person an indescribable odor of stale cinnamon, which you will be at a loss to account for, but which his elder brother will recognize as the natural result of smoking "cinnamon cigars," wherewith certain wicked tobacconists of this city tempt curious youth. If you follow him to his chamber, you will probably discover more damning evidence of his guilt.

We will draw the curtain over the scene of the Spartan mother--we hope you belong to that nearly extinct class--which is to follow. Let us suppose all differences settled, the habit ostensibly given up, and your darling, grown more honest or more artful,--the result is the same to your blissful ignorance,--studiously pursuing his way until he enters college. Some fine day you drive over to the neighboring university, and, entering his room unannounced, you find him coloring his first (factitious) meerschaum!--also a sad deficiency in his wardrobe of half-worn clothes. _C'est une pipe qui coûte cher à culotter_, the college meerschaum,--and in more ways than one, according to the "Autocrat":--"I do not advise you, young man, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe," _et seq_. More bold, the Sophomore will smoke openly at home; and by the end of the third vacation, it is one of those unyielding _faits accomplis_ against which reformers, household or peripatetic, beat their heads in vain.

Perhaps your husband smokes? If so, at what period of the twenty-four hours have you invariably found Mr. ---- most lenient to your little pecuniary peccadilloes? Is he not always most good-natured when his cigar is about one-third consumed, the ash evenly burnt and adherent, and not fallen into his shirt-bosom? Depend upon it, tobacco is a great soother of domestic differences.

Let us, then, look an existing, firmly rooted evil--if you will call it so--in the face, and see if it is quite so bad as it is represented. It is too wide-spread to be sneered away,--for we might almost say that smokers were the rule, and non-smokers the exception, among all civilized men, Charles Kingsley supports us here:--"'Man a cooking animal,' my dear Doctor Johnson? Pooh! man is a _smoking_ animal. There is his _ergon_, his 'differential energy,' as the Aristotelians say,--his true distinction from the orangoutang. Ponder it well."

_Query_.--What did the old Roman do without a cigar? How idle through the day? How survive his interminable _post-coenal_ potations?--The thought is not our own. It occurs somewhere in De Quincey, we believe. It is one of those self-evident propositions you wonder had not occurred to you before.--What an accessory of luxury the pipe would have been to him who passed the livelong day under the mosaic arches of the _Thermoe_! The _strigiles_ would have vanished before the meerschaum, had that magic clay then been known. How completely would the _hookah_ and the _narghileh_ have harmonized with the _crater, cyathi_, and tripods of the _triclinium_ in that portraiture of the "Decadence of Rome" which hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery! Poor fellows! they managed to exist without them.

Though pipes are found carved on very old sculptures in China, and the habit of smoking was long since extensively followed there, according to Pallas, and although certain species of the tobacco-plant, as the _Nicotiana rustica_, would appear to be indigenous to the country, yet we have the best reason to conclude that America, if not the exclusive home of the herb, was the birthplace of its use by man. The first great explorer of the West found the sensuous natives of Hispaniola rolling up and smoking tobacco-leaves with the same persistent indolence that we recognize in the Cuban of the present day. Rough Cortés saw with surprise the luxurious Aztec composing himself for the _siesta_ in the middle of the day as invariably as his fellow Dons in Castile. But he was amazed that the barbarians had discovered in tobacco a sedative to promote their reveries and compose them to sleep, of which the _hidalgos_ were as yet ignorant, but which they were soon to appropriate with avidity, and to use with equal zest. Humboldt says that it had been cultivated by the people of Orinoco from time immemorial, and was smoked all over America at the time of the Spanish Conquest,--also that it was first discovered by Europeans in Yucatan, in 1520, and was there called _Petum_. Tobacco, according to the same authority, was taken from the word _tabac_, the name of an instrument used in the preparation of the herb.

Though Columbus and his immediate followers doubtless brought home specimens of tobacco among the other spoils of the New World, Jean Nicot, ambassador to Portugal from Francis II., first sent the seeds to France, where they were cultivated and used about the year 1560. In honor of its sponsor, Botany has named the plant _Nicotiana tabacum_, and Chemistry distinguished as _Nicotin_ its active alkaloid. Sir Francis Drake first brought tobacco to England about 1586. It owed the greater part of its early popularity, however, to the praise and practice of Raleigh: his high standing and character would have sufficed to introduce still more novel customs. The weed once inhaled, the habit once acquired, its seductions would not allow it to be easily laid aside; and we accordingly find that royal satire, public odium, and ruinous cost were alike inadequate to restrain its rapidly increasing consumption. Somewhere about the year 1600 or 1601 tobacco was carried to the East, and introduced among the Turks and Persians,--it is not known by whom: the devotion of modern Mussulmans might reasonably ascribe it to Allah himself. It seems almost incredible that the Oriental type of life and character could have existed without tobacco. The pipe seems as inseparable as the Koran from the follower of Mahomet.

Barely three centuries ago, then, the first seeds of the _Nicotiana tabacum_ germinated in European soil: now, who shall count the harvests? Less than three centuries ago, Raleigh attracted a crowd by sitting smoking at his door: now, the humblest bog-trotter of Ireland must be poor indeed who cannot own or borrow a pipe. A little more than a century and a half ago, the import into Great Britain was only one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and part of that was reëxported: now, the imports reach thirty million pounds, and furnish to government a revenue of twenty millions of dollars,--being an annual tax of three shillings four pence on every soul in the United Kingdom. Nor is the case of England an exceptional one. The tobacco-zone girdles the globe. From the equator, through fifty degrees of latitude, it grows and is consumed on every continent. On every sea it is carried and used by the mariners of every nation. Its incense rises in every clime, as from one vast altar dedicated to its worship,--before which ancient holocausts, the smoke of burnt-offerings in the old Jewish rites, the censers of the Church, and the joss-sticks of the East, must "pale their ineffectual fires." All classes, all ages, in all climates, and in some countries both sexes, use tobacco to dispel heat, to resist cold, to soothe to reverie, or to arouse the brain, according to their national habitations, peculiarities, or habits.

This is not the language of hyperbole. With a partial exception in favor of the hop, tobacco is the _sole recognized narcotic_ of civilization. Opium and hemp, if indulged in, are concealed, by the Western nations: public opinion, public morality, are at war with them. Not so with tobacco, which the majority of civilized men use, and the minority rather deprecate than denounce. We shall avail ourselves of some statistics and computations, which we find ready-calculated, at various sources, to support these assertions. The following are the amounts of tobacco consumed _per head_ in various countries:--

"In Great Britain, 17 ounces per head; in France, 18 1/2 ounces,--three-eighths of this quantity being used in the form of snuff; in Denmark, 70 ounces (4 1/2 lbs.) per head; and in Belgium, 73 1/2 ounces per head;--in New South Wales, where there are no duties, by official returns, 14 pounds per head." We doubt if these quantities much exceed the European average, particularly of Germany and Turkey in Europe. "In some of the States of North America the proportion is much larger, while among Eastern nations, where there are no duties, it is believed to be greater still."

The average for the whole human race of one thousand millions has been reasonably set at seventy ounces per head; which gives a total produce and consumption of tobacco of two millions of tons, or 4,480,000,000 of pounds! "At eight hundred pounds an acre, this would require five and a half million acres of rich land to be kept constantly under tobacco-cultivation."

"The whole amount of wheat consumed by the inhabitants of Great Britain weighs only four and one-third million tons." The reader can draw his own inferences.

The United States are among the largest producers of tobacco, furnishing one-twentieth of the estimated production of the whole world. According to the last census, we raised in 1850 about two hundred million pounds. All the States, with five exceptions,--and two of these are Utah and Minnesota,--shared, in various degrees, in the growth of this great staple. Confining our attention to those which raised a million of pounds and upwards, we find Connecticut and Indiana cited at one million each; Ohio and North Carolina, at ten to twelve millions; Missouri, Tennessee, and Maryland, from seventeen to twenty-one millions; Kentucky and Virginia, about fifty-six million pounds.

Of this gross two hundred million pounds, we export one hundred and twenty-two millions, leaving about seventy-eight millions for home consumption.

Not satisfied with the quality of this modest amount, we import also, from Cuba, Turkey, Germany, etc., about four million pounds, in Havana and Manila cigars and Turkish and German manufactured smoking-tobacco. Thus we increase the total of our consumption to eighty-two million pounds, which gives about three pounds eight ounces to every inhabitant of the United States, against seventeen ounces in England, and eighteen ounces in France. From 1840 to 1850, the consumption in the United States, per head, increased from two pounds and half an ounce to three pounds eight ounces. Here, we buy our tobacco at a fair profit to the producer. In most of the countries of Europe it is either subject to a high tax, or made a government monopoly, both as regards its cultivation, and its manufacture and sale. France consumes about forty-one million pounds, and the imperial exchequer is thereby enriched eighty-six million francs _per annum_. Not only is the poor man thus obliged to pay an excessive price, but the tobacco furnished him is of a much inferior quality to ours. "_Petit-caporal_" smoking-tobacco, the delight of the middling classes of Paris, hardly suits an American's taste. In Italy more than one _pubblicano_ has enriched himself and bought nobility by farming the public revenues from tobacco and salt. In Austria the cigars are detestable, though Hungary grows good tobacco, and its Turkish border furnishes some of the meerschaum clay. German smoking-tobaccoes are favorites with students here, but owe their excellence to their mode of manufacture.

Tobacco, according to some authorities, holds the next place to salt, as the article most universally and largely used by man,--we mean, of course, apart from cereals and meats. It is unquestionably the widest-used narcotic. Opium takes the second rank, and hemp the third; but the opium--and hashish-eaters usually add the free smoking of tobacco to their other indulgences.

From these great columns of consumption we may logically deduce two prime points for our argument.

1st. That an article so widely used must possess some peculiar quality producing _a desirable effect_.

2d. That an article so widely used cannot produce _any marked deleterious effect_.

For it must meet some instinctive craving of the human being,--as bread and salt meet his absolute needs,--to be so widely sought after and consumed. Fashion does not rule this habit, but it is equally grateful to the savage and the sage. And it cannot be so ruinous to body and mind as some reformers assert; otherwise, in the natural progress of causes and effects, whole nations must have already been extinguished under its use. Many mighty nations have used it for centuries, and show no aggregated deterioration from its employment. Individual exceptions exist in every community. They arise either from idiosyncrasy or from excess, and they have no weight in the argument.

Now, what are these qualities and these effects? We can best answer the first part of the question by a quotation.

"In ministering fully to his natural wants and cravings, man passes through three successive stages.

"First, the necessities of his material nature are provided for. Beef and bread represent the means by which, in every country, this end is attained. And among the numerous forms of animal and vegetable food a wonderful similarity of chemical composition prevails.

"Second, he seeks to assuage the cares of his mind, and to banish uneasy reflections. Fermented liquors are the agents by which this is effected." [They are variously produced by every people, and the active principle is in all the same, namely, Alcohol.]

"Third, he desires to multiply his enjoyments, intellectual and animal, and for the time to exalt them. This he attains by the aid of narcotics. And of these narcotics, again, it is remarkable that almost every country or tribe has its own, either aboriginal or imported; so that the universal instinct of the race has led, somehow or other, to the universal supply of this want or craving also."

These narcotics are Opium, Hemp, the Betel, Coca, Thorn-Apple, Siberian Fungus, Hops, Lettuce, Tobacco. The active principles vary in each, thus differing from foods and stimulants. Our business is now to inquire into the chemical constituents of tobacco.

The leaves of this plant owe their properties to certain invariable active principles, which chemistry has enabled us to separate from those ingredients which are either inert or common to it and other forms of vegetation. They are two in number,--a volatile alkali, and a volatile oil, called _nicotin_ and _nicotianin_, respectively. A third powerful constituent is developed by combustion, which is named the _empyreumatic oil_.

Starch, gum, albumen, resin, lignin, extractive, and organic acids exist in tobacco, as they do, in varying proportions, in other plants. But the herb under consideration contains a relatively larger proportion of inorganic salts, as those of lime, potassa, and ammonia,--and especially of highly nitrogenized substances; which explains why tobacco is so exhausting a crop to the soil, and why ashes are among its best fertilizers.

The organic base, _nicotin_, (or _nicotia_, as some chemists prefer to call it,) exists in tobacco combined with an acid in excess, and in this state is not volatile. As obtained by distillation with caustic soda, and afterwards treated with sulphuric acid, etc., it is a colorless fluid, volatilizable, inflammable, of little smell when cold, but of an exceedingly acrid, burning taste, and alkaline. Nicotia contains a much larger proportion of nitrogen than most of the other organic alkalies. In its action on the animal system it is one of the most virulent poisons known. It exists in varying, though small proportion, in all species of tobacco. Those called mild, and most esteemed, seem to contain the least. Thus, according to Orfila, Havana tobacco yields two per cent of the alkaloid, and Virginia nearly seven per cent. In the rankest varieties it rarely exceeds eight parts to the hundred. The same toxicologist says that it has the remarkable property of resisting decomposition in the decaying tissues of the body, and he detected it in the bodies of animals destroyed by it, several months after their death. In this particular it resembles arsenic.

_Nicotianin_, or the volatile oil, is probably the odorous principle of tobacco. According to some, it does not exist in the fresh leaves, but is generated in the drying process. When obtained by distillation, a pound of leaves will yield only two grains; it is therefore in a much smaller proportion than the alkaloid, forming only one half of one per cent. It is a fatty substance, having the odor of tobacco-smoke, and a bitter taste. Applied to the nose, it occasions sneezing, and taken internally, giddiness and nausea. It is therefore one of the active constituents of tobacco, though to a much less degree than nicotin itself. For while Hermstadt swallowed a grain of nicotianin with impunity, the vapor of pure nicotin is so irritating that it is difficult to breathe in a room in which a single drop has been evaporated.

When distilled in a retort, at a temperature above that of boiling water, or burned, as we burn it in a pipe, tobacco affords its third poison, the _empyreumatic oil_. This is acrid, of a dark brown color, and having a smell as of an old pipe, in the pores of which, particularly of meerschaum clay, it may be found. It is also narcotic and very poisonous, one drop killing reptiles, as if by an electric shock: in this mode of action it is like prussic acid. But this empyreumatic oil consists of two substances; for, if it be washed with acetic acid, it loses its poisonous quality. It contains, therefore, a harmless oil, and a poisonous alkaline substance, which the acetic acid combines with and removes. It has been shown to contain the alkaloid nicotia, and this is probably its only active component.

Assuming, therefore, that nicotianin, from its feebler action and small amount, is not a very efficient principle in producing the narcotic effects of tobacco, and that the empyreumatic oil consists only of fatty matters holding the alkali in solution, we are forced to believe that the only constituent worthy of much attention, as the very soul and essence of the plant, is the organic base, nicotin, or nicotia.

It is probable that the tobacco-chewer, by putting fifty grains of the "Solace," "Honey-Dew," or "Cavendish" into his mouth for the purpose of mastication, introduces at the same time from one to four grains of nicotin with it, according to the quality of the tobacco he uses. It is _not_ probable that anything like this amount is absorbed into the system. Nature protects itself by salivation. It is possible, that, in smoking one hundred grains of tobacco, there _may_ be drawn into the mouth two grains or more of the same poison; "for, as nicotin volatilizes at a temperature below that of burning tobacco, it is constantly present in the smoke." It is not probable that here, again, so much is absorbed.

But we will return to this question of the relative effects of chewing, cigar- and pipe-smoking, and snuff-taking, presently. For we suppose that the anxious mother, if she has followed us so far, is by this time in considerable alarm at this wholesale poisoning.

Poisons are to be judged by their effects; for this is the only means we have of knowing them to be such. And if a poison is in common use, we must embrace all the results of such use in a perfect generalization before we can decide impartially. We do not hesitate to eat peaches, though we know they owe much of their peculiar flavor to prussic acid. It is but fair to apply an equally large generalization to tobacco. Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements of the peach and the bitter almond into a transparent fluid, of which the smell shall be vertiginous and the taste death. But chemistry is often misunderstood, in two ways: in the one case, by the incredulity of total ignorance; in the other, by the overcredulity of imperfect knowledge. That poor woman who murdered her husband by arsenic not long since was an instance of the first. She laughed to scorn the idea that the chemists could discover anything in the ejected contents of the stomach of her victim, which she voluntarily left in their way. She could not conceive that the scattered crystals of the fatal powder might be gathered into a metallic mirror, the first glance at which would reflect her guilt.

They who gape, horror-struck, at the endless revelations of chemistry, without giving reason time to act, err in the second manner. Led away by the brilliant hues and wonderful transformations of the laboratory, they forget the size of the world outside, in which these changes are enacted, and the quiet way in which Nature works. The breath of chlorine is deadly, but we daily eat it in safety, wrapped in its poison-proof envelope of sodium, as common salt. Carbonic acid is among the gases most hostile to man, but he drinks it in soda-water or Champagne with impunity. So we cannot explain how a poison will act, if introduced into the body in the diluted form in which Nature offers it, and there subjected to the complicated chemico-vital processes which constitute life.