co was not as popular
then as roll. Smokers carried a roll of tobacco, a knife and tinder to
ignite their tobacco. At the close of the Sixteenth Century tobacco
was introduced into the East. In Persia and Turkey where at first its
use was opposed by the most cruel torture it gained at length the
sanction and approval of even the Sultan himself. Pallas gives the
following account in regard to its first introduction into Asia:

[Footnote 50: Neander says that Varinas tobacco was the
best.]

"In Asia, and especially in China, the use of tobacco for
smoking is more ancient than the discovery of the New World,
I too scarcely entertain a doubt. Among the Chinese, and
among the Mongol tribes who had the most intercourse with
them, the custom of smoking is so general, so frequent, and
become so indispensable a luxury; the tobacco purse affixed
to their belt, so necessary an article of dress; the form of
the pipes from which the Dutch seem to have taken the model
of theirs so original; and, lastly the preparation of the
yellow leaves, which are merely rubbed to pieces and then
put into the pipe, so peculiar, that we cannot possibly
derive all this from America by way of Europe; especially as
India, (where the habit of smoking is not so general,)
intervenes between Persia and China. May we not expect to
find traces of this custom in the first account of the
Voyages of the Portugese and Dutch to China? To investigate
this subject, I have indeed the inclination but not
sufficient leisure."

[Illustration: Tobacco and Theology.]

We find by research that smoking was the most general mode of using
tobacco in England when first introduced. In France the habit of
snuffing was the most popular mode and to this day the custom is more
general than elsewhere. In the days of the Regency snuff-taking had
attained more general popularity than any other mode of using the
plant leaves; the clergy were fond of the "dust" and carried the most
expensive snuff boxes, while many loved the pipe and indulged in
tobacco-smoking. The old vicar restored to his living enjoyed a pipe
when seated in his chair musing on the subject of his next Sunday's
discourse, "with a jug of sound old ale and a huge tome of sound old
divinity on the table before him, for the occasional refreshment as
well of the bodily as the spiritual man."

The c