Mather, who was fully
aware of the disadvantages as well as sinfulness of this habit,
deprecates it with a qualification at which it is impossible to repress
a smile. It savours so much of "beating the Devil round a bush." Thus he
says--"May God preserve me from the indecent, ignoble, criminal slavery,
to the mean delight of smoking a weed, which I see so many carried away
with. And _if_ ever I should smoke it, let me be so wise as to do it,
not only with moderation, but also with such employment of my mind, as I
may make that action afford me a leisure for!"[75]

The effects of smoking on the breath, clothes, hair, and indeed the
whole body, are most offensive. What is more overpowering than the stale
smell remaining in a room where several persons have been smoking? When
the practice is carried to excess, it causes the gums to become lax and
flabby, and to recede from the discoloured teeth, which appear long,
unsightly, and at length drop out. Dr. Rush, in his "Account of the life
and death of Edward Drinker," tells us that that individual lost all his
teeth by drawing the hot smoke of tobacco into his mouth. By the waste
of saliva, and the narcotic power of tobacco, the digestive powers are
impaired, and "every kind of dyspeptic symptoms," says Cullen, "are
produced."[76] King James does not forget to note this habit as a breach
of good manners. "It is a great vanitie and uncleannesse," says he,
"that at the table, a place of respect, of cleanlinesse, of modestie,
men should not be ashamed to sit tossing pipes, and puffing of the smoke
of tobacco one to another, making the filthy smoke and stinke thereof to
exhale athwart the dishes and infect the aire, when very often men that
abhorre it, are at their repast."

We come now to the subject of chewing. Whether the rock goat, the filthy
animal to which we have before adverted, or the tobacco worm, first
taught imitative man to masticate tobacco, we are ignorant. One thing,
however, is most certain, that of all modes of using it, chewing seems
most vulgar and ungentlemanlike, and it is worthy of particular remark,
that in our country it is more used in this manner, among the better
class of society, than in any other part of the world.[77] All the worst
effects which have been ascribed to it in the two former modes of using
it, are, with increased severity, imputed to chewing. But tobacco used
in this form is said to diminish hunger. "We have been told," says Dr.
Leake