What could it have been used
for that was worth sixpence a time? Other uncommon features are that
the money portion is shallow, and that the part for the tobacco
extends the whole length of the box. I should say that the box is much
smaller than any others I have ever seen." No information as to the
use of this curious box was forthcoming from any of the learned and
ingenious correspondents of _Notes and Queries_; and a problem which
they cannot solve may not unreasonably be regarded as insoluble.

Readers of Dickens are familiar with the drawing by Cruikshank which
illustrates the chapter on "Scotland Yard" in Dickens's "Sketches by
Boz," which was written before 1836. It shows the coal-heavers sitting
round the fire shouting out "some sturdy chorus," and smoking long
clays. "Here," wrote Dickens, "in a dark wainscoted-room of ancient
appearance, cheered by the glow of a mighty fire ... sat the lusty
coal-heavers, quaffing large draughts of Barclay's best, and puffing
forth volumes of smoke, which wreathed heavily above their heads, and
involved the room in a thick dark cloud." These good folk and others
of their kin had never been affected by any change of fashion in
respect of smoking. In another of the "Sketches," the amusing "Tuggs's
at Ramsgate," when poor Cymon Tuggs is hid behind the curtain, half
dead with fear, he hears Captain Waters call for brandy and
cigars--"The cigars were introduced; the captain was a professed
smoker; so was the lieutenant; so was Joseph Tuggs." Poor Cymon, on
the other hand, was one of those who could never smoke "without
feeling it indispensably necessary to retire, immediately, and never
could smell smoke without a strong disposition to cough."
Consequently, as the apartment was small, the door closed and the
smoke powerful, poor Cymon was soon compelled to cough, which
precipitated the catastrophe. It is noticeable that Dickens speaks of
the three worthies as _professed_ smokers, a remark which suggests
that such dare-devils, men who would take cigars as a matter of course
and for enjoyment, and not merely out of a complimentary acquiescence
in some one else's wish, were comparatively rare.

Other illustrations of folk who smoked, not cigars, but pipes, may be
drawn from "Pickwick," which was published in 1836. At the very
beginning, when Mr. Pickwick calls a cab at Saint Martin's-le-Grand,
the first cab is "fetched from the public-house, where he had been
smoking his first pipe.