as I've got
a hump on my back. But it's pretty good advice, after all, what the song
says,--

"So save up your pennies and put away your rocks,
And you'll always have tobacco in your old tobacco box!

"Here's your Cage-Roach. Gimme your money. There's your change; five,
ten, fifteen, seventeen. Now run along. Come back again; what did you
say your name was?"

"Fweddie."

"You mean Freddie, don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why don't you say what you mean? Well, Freddie, there's plenty of
tobacco left in this shop, so you can come in whenever the old tobacco
box at home runs out. And don't forget to come in to see Aunt Amanda.
Plenty of goods left in the shop whenever--you see all that?" He pointed
up towards the shelves. "I'll tell you something I ain't told to but
mighty few people before. There's a jar of smoking tobacco up there
that's just plain magic. Magic! You know what that means?"

Freddie started, and looked up at the shelves in alarm. He nodded.

"It's that one, on the middle shelf; the Chinaman's head. Do you see
it?"

He pointed to a white porcelain jar, shaped like a human head. Freddie
could see that it was the head of some foreign kind of man, with a
little round blue cap on top, which was probably the lid.

"That tobacco in that Chinaman's head is magic, as sure as you're alive.
I wouldn't smoke it if you'd give me all the plum puddings in this city
next Christmas; no, sir; and I wouldn't allow nobody else to smoke it,
neither: I just naturally wouldn't dare to. Do you know where that
tobacco come from? A sailor off of one them ships down there in the
harbor, that come all the way from China--yes, sir, _China!_--give it to
me once for a quid of plug-cut; what you might call broke, he was, and
it wasn't any use to him because he didn't smoke, but he did chew; and
he told me all about it; he stole it from an old sorcerer in China,
where he'd just come from. Don't you never touch it! I wouldn't want to
be in your boots if you ever smoked that tobacco in that there
Chinaman's head! You can steal anything else in this shop, and it
wouldn't do much harm to anybody; but you keep your hands off of that
Chinaman's tobacco, mind what I'm telling you!"

"Yes, sir," said Freddie. He had never thought about smoking before, in
connection with himself, but now for the first time he began to wish
that he knew how to smoke. It would be worth risking something to take a
whiff or two of the magic tobacco