Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

Sir G.W. Forrest, in his book on "The Indian Mutiny," tells how at the siege of Lucknow, as the month of August advanced, "the tea and sugar, except a small store kept for invalids, were exhausted. The tobacco also was gone, and Europeans and natives suffered greatly from the want of it. The soldiers yearned for a pipe after a hard day's work, and smoked dry leaves as the only substitute they could obtain." Mr. L.E.R. Rees in his diary of the same siege noted—"I have given up smoking tobacco, and have taken to tea-leaves and neem-leaves, and guava fruit-leaves instead, which the poor soldiers are also constantly using." The neem-tree is better known, perhaps, as the margosa. It yields a bitter oil, and is supposed to possess febrifugal properties.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 11:

Sidgwick's praise of tobacco, classically draped in Greek verse, occasionally of the macaronic order, is delightful. He hails the pipe as the work of Pan, and the divine smoke as the best and most fragrant of gifts-healer of sorrow, companion in joy, rest for the toilers, drink for the thirsty, warmth for the cold, coolness in the heat, and a cheap feast for those who waste away through hunger. How is it, he says, that through so many ages men, who have need of thee, have not seen thy nature? Often, he continues-the verses may be roughly translated-often, when I am in Alpine solitudes, tied in a chain to a few companions, clinging to the rope, while barbarians lead the way, carrying in my hands an ice-axe and breathless crawling up the snow-covered plain-then, when groaning I reach the summit (either pulled up or on foot), how have I rested, on my back on the rocks, charming my soul with thy divine clouds! He goes on in burlesque strain to speak of the joys of tobacco when he lies in idleness by the streams in breathless summer, comforted by a bath just taken, or when in the middle of the night he is worn out by revising endless exercises, underlining the mistakes in red and allotting marks, or weighed down by the wise men of old-Thucydides, Sophocles, Euripides, the ideas of Plato, wiles of Pindar, fearfully corrupt strophe of chorus, wondrous guesses of Teutons and fancies of philologists, when men swoon in the inexplicable wanderings of the endless examination of Homer, when the brain reels among such toil-then he hails the pipe, help of mortals, and hastens to kindle sacrifices at its altars and rejoices as he tastes its smoke. Let some one, he exclaims, bring Bryant and May's fire, which strikes a light only if rubbed on the box-

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