mple of these old public-house tobacco-boxes
which is made of lead. It has bosses of lions' heads at the ends, and
a portrait in relief on the front of the Duke of Wellington in his
plumed cocked hat. Inside, there is a flat piece of sheet-lead with a
knob to keep the tobacco pressed close, so that it may not dry up.

A curious and popular variety of tobacco-box often to be found in
rural inns and ale-houses was made somewhat on the principle of the
now everywhere familiar automatic machines. The late Mr. Frederick
Gale, in a column of "Tobacco Reminiscences," which he contributed to
the _Globe_ newspaper in 1899, said, that at village outdoor festivals
of the 'thirties and early 'forties, respectable elderly farmers and
tradesmen would sit "round a table, on which was an automatic, square,
brass tobacco-box of large dimensions, into which the smokers dropped
a halfpenny and the lid flew back, and the publican trusted to the
smoker's honour to fill his pipe and close the box." When the pipes
were filled they were lighted by means of tinder-box and flint, and a
stable lanthorn supplied by the ostler. A penny would appear to have
been a more usual charge, for a frequent inscription on the lid was:

_The custom is, before you fill,
To put a penny in the till;
When you have filled, without delay
Close the lid, or sixpence pay._

One of these old brass penny-in-the-slot tobacco-boxes was included in
the exhibition of Welsh Antiquities held at Cardiff in the summer of
1913.

In the Colchester Museum is an automatic tobacco-box and till of
japanned iron. On the lid of the box is painted a keg of tobacco and
two clay pipes; and on that of the till the following doggerel lines:

_A halfpeny dropt into the till,
Upsprings the lid and you may fill;
When you have filled, without delay,
Shut down the lid, or sixpence pay._

A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, in 1908, mentioned that he
possessed two of these old penny-in-the-slot tobacco-boxes, and had
come across another in a dealer's shop of a somewhat peculiar make,
about which he wished to get information. "It is of the ordinary
shape," he wrote, "but differs from any I have previously seen in this
respect, that it works with a sixpence, and not with a penny or
halfpenny. It is engraved with the usual lines, except that the user
is asked to put sixpence in the till, and then to shut down the lid
under penalty of a fine of a shilling.