oxes--and
of the injuries which are done to the clothing, during a whole life, the
aggregate sum would probably amount to several hundred dollars. To a
labouring man this would be a decent portion for a son or daughter,
while the same sum saved by a man in affluent circumstances, would have
enabled him, by a contribution to a public charity, to have lessened a
large portion of the ignorance or misery of mankind." But Lord Stanhope
makes a far more liberal estimate than Dr. Rush; "Every professed,
inveterate, and incurable snuff-taker," says he, "at a moderate
computation, takes one pinch in ten minutes. Every pinch, with the
agreeable ceremony of blowing and wiping the nose, and other incidental
circumstances, consumes a minute and a half. One minute and a half out
of every ten, allowing sixteen hours to a snuff-taking day, amounts to
two hours and twenty-four minutes out of every natural day, or one day
of every ten. One day out of ten amounts to thirty six days and a half
in a year. Hence, if we suppose the practice to be persisted in forty
years, two entire years of the snuff-taker's life will be devoted to
tickling his nose, and two more to blowing it." The same author proposes
in a subsequent essay to show, that from the expense of snuff,
snuff-boxes, and handkerchiefs, a fund might be formed to pay off the
English National debt!

The subject of snuffing having employed more of our time than we
anticipated, the two following heads of smoking and chewing will be more
briefly noticed. On the subject of smoking, Mr. Beloe has preserved the
following old epigram.[72]

"We buy the dryest wood that we can finde,
And willingly would leave the smoke behinde:
But in tobacco a thwart course we take
Buying the herb only for the smoke's sake."

Smoking was the earliest mode of using tobacco,[73] (as might be
inferred from the epigram) and for a long time the only mode in which it
was used in Europe. Certainly in our day it is the most general, and at
the same time the most expensive, and although several rivals contend
with Sir Walter Ralegh for the praise of having introduced tobacco into
England, yet the "bright honour" of having taught his countrymen to
imitate the Indians, in this particular, he "wears without corrival."
Almost all the arguments which have been employed against the use of
tobacco as a sternutatory, are more or less applicable to it when used
in the way of fumigation.[74] Good old Cotton