n which he wrapped up his tobacco for customers
that he had formerly been shopman at the Sir Roger de Coverley--a
notice which has preserved the name of another tobacconist's sign
borrowed from literature. Seventeenth--century London signs were the
"Three Tobacco Pipes," "Two Tobacco Pipes" crossed, and "Five Tobacco
Pipes." At Edinburgh in the eighteenth century there were tobacconists
who used two pipes crossed, a roll of tobacco and two leaves over two
crossed pipes, and a roll of tobacco and three leaves.

The older tobacconists were wont to assert, says Larwood, that the man
in the moon could enjoy his pipe, hence "the 'Man in the Moon' is
represented on some of the tobacconists' papers in the Banks
Collection puffing like a steam engine, and underneath the words,
'Who'll smoake with ye Man in ye Moone?'" The Dutch, as every one
knows, are great smokers, so a Dutchman has been a common figure on
tobacconists' signs. In the eighteenth century a common device was
three figures representing a Dutchman, a Scotchman and a sailor,
explained by the accompanying rhyme:

_We three are engaged in one cause,
I snuffs, I smokes, and I chaws!_

Larwood says that a tobacconist in the Kingsland Road had the three
men on his sign, but with a different legend:

_This Indian weed is good indeed,
Puff on, keep up the joke
'Tis the best, 'twill stand the test,
Either to chew or smoke._

The bill bearing this sign is in Banks's Collection, 1750. Another in
the same collection, with a similar meaning but of more elaborate
design, shows the three men, the central figure having his hands in
his pockets and in his mouth a pipe from which smoke is rolling. The
man on the left advances towards this central figure holding out a
pipe, above which is the legend "Voule vous de Rape." Above the middle
man is "No dis been better." The third man, on the right, holds out,
also towards the central figure, a tobacco-box, above which is the
legend "Will you have a quid."

A frequent sign-device among dealers in snuff was the Crown and Rasp.
The oldest method of taking snuff, says Larwood, in the "History of
Signboards," was "to scrape it with a rasp from the dry root of the
tobacco plant; the powder was then placed on the back of the hand and
so snuffed up; hence the name of _rape_ (rasped) for a kind of snuff,
and the common tobacconist's sign of La Carotte d'or (the golden root)
in France." _Rape_ became in English