sort a defence of American ptyalism, and in the tendency of
its inculcations, reminds us of the arguments in favor of the cultivation
of a refined style of _murder_, which should constitute it one of the fine
arts, to which we gave a place many months back: 'After having in my
broken dreams perambulated every part and parcel of the universe, and then
tossed about for hours on an ocean of bodily discomforts, each a dagger to
repose, and mental disquietudes, of which any one was enough to wither all
the poppies of Somnus, I rose about four o' my watch, and commenced
chewing the narcotic weed of Virginia. For you must know that in childhood
almost, through a precocious mannishness and a desire of experimental
knowledge, I commenced the habit of tobacco-chewing, and the vice born of
a freak, has 'grown with my growth,' till now it holds me as in a 'vice'
screwed up and secured by a giant. (Please observe that there's a pun in
that last sentence.) Where the conventionalities of society compel me to
attidunize my appearance and customs into the stiffness of gentility, I
puff the Havana; but when the privacy of my own room or the solitude of
the roads and fields permit me to vulgarize to my liking, I thrust a ball
of 'Mrs. MILLER'S fine-cut,' or a fragment of the 'natural James' River
sweet,' between the sub-maxillary bone and its carnal casement, and then
masticate and expectorate 'a la Yankee.' or 'more Americano.' Pah! oh!
fie! for shame! and all other interjections indicative of horror, or
expressive of disgust. '_Quousque tandem?_' Beg your pardon, Mrs.
TROLLOPE. '_Quamdiu etiam?_' I implore your commiseration, Captain BASIL.
'_Oh, tempora! oh, mores!_' Have mercy, illustrious and
praise-bespattered, and almost Sir-Waltered BOZ. Do not, under the uneasy
weight of glory, and in the intoxicating consciousness of a right to the
oligarchic exclusiveness of the goose-quill 'haute volee,' strike right
and left among your sturdy democratic adorers, because they choose to
convert their mandibles into quid-grinders, and their [Greek: chasmat'
odonton] into ceaseless jet d'eaux of saliva. Reflect that the 'quid'
assists in a philosophic investigation of the 'quiddities' of things, and
that from this habit alone perhaps we have made such advances in casuistry
as to have discovered equity in repudiation, freedom in mobocracy, and the
sword of justice in the bowie-knife. Chewing is eminently democratic,
since all chewers are 'pro hac _vi