me other trade which is bawde to his Tobacco, and that to his
wife, which is the flame that follows this smoke."

This brief "Character" is hardly so pointed or so effective as some of
the others in the "Micro-Cosmographie," but it would seem that the
Bishop was not very friendly to tobacco. In the character of "A
Drunkard" he says: "Tobacco serves to aire him after a washing [_i.e._
a drinking-bout], and is his onely breath, and breathing while." In
another, a tavern "is the common consumption of the Afternoone, and
the murderer, or maker away of a rainy day. It is the Torrid Zone that
scorches the face, and Tobacco the gunpowder that blows it up."

The druggist-tobacconists were well stocked with abundance of
pipes--those known as Winchester pipes were highly popular--with maple
blocks for cutting or shredding the tobacco upon, juniper wood
charcoal fires, and silver tongs with which the hot charcoal could be
lifted to light the customer's pipe. The maple block was in constant
use in those days, when the many present forms of prepared tobacco and
varied mixtures were unknown. In Middleton and Dekker's "Roaring
Girl," 1611, the "mincing and shredding of tobacco" is mentioned; and
in the same play, by the way, we are told that "a pipe of rich smoak"
was sold for sixpence.

The tobacco-tongs were more properly called ember-or brand-tongs. They
sometimes had a tobacco-stopper riveted in near the axis of the tongs,
and thus could be easily distinguished from other kinds of tongs. An
example in the Guildhall Museum, made of brass, and probably of late
seventeenth-century date, has the end of one of the handles formed
into a stopper. In the same collection there are several pairs of
ember-tongs with handles or jaws decorated. In one or two a handle
terminates in a hook, by which they could be hung up when not required
for use. In that delightful book of pictures and gossip concerning old
household and farming gear, and old-fashioned domestic plenishings of
many kinds, called "Old West Surrey," Miss Jekyll figures two pairs of
old ember-or brand-tongs. One of these quite deserves the praise which
she bestows upon it. "Its lines," says Miss Jekyll, "fill one with the
satisfaction caused by a thing that is exactly right, and with
admiration for the art and skill of a true artist." These homely tongs
are fashioned with a fine eye for symmetry, and, indeed, for beauty of
design and perfect fitness for the intended purpose. The