_One
ton of Tobacco!_" Ah,

"Think of it, picture it
Now, if you can!"

From "A Paper of Tobacco,"[63] we extract the following humorous
description of Yankee cigar smokers, which to a certain extent is true
to life, but like most of the articles descriptive of American life by
English Authors, who travel in America and write _a book_ afterwards,
it is exaggerated or overdrawn:

[Footnote 63: London, 1839.]

[Illustration: An American smoker.]

"The Americans, who pride themselves on being the
fastest-going people on the 'versal globe'--who build
steamers that can out-paddle the sea-serpent and breed
horses that can trot faster than an ostrich can run--are,
undoubtedly, entitled to take precedence of all nations as
consumers of the weed. The sedentary Turk, who smokes from
morn to night, does not, on an average, get through so much
tobacco per annum, as a right slick, active, go-ahead
Yankee, who thinks nothing, 'upon his own relation,' of
felling a wagon-load of timber before breakfast, or of
cutting down a couple of acres corn before dinner. The
Americans, it is to be observed, generally smoke cigars; and
tobacco in this form burns very fast away in the open air,
more especially when the consumer is rapidly locomotive,
whether upon his own legs, the back of a horse, the top of a
coach, the deck of a steamboat, or in an open railway
carriage. The habit of chewing tobacco is also prevalent
in 'the States,' nor is it, as in Great Britain and Ireland,
almost entirely confined to the poorer classes. Members of
the House of Representatives and of the Senate, doctors,
judges, barristers, and attorneys chew tobacco almost as
generally as the laboring classes in the old country. Even
in a court of justice, more especially in the Western
States, it is no unusual thing to see judge, jury, and the
gentlemen of the bar, all chewing and spitting as liberally
as the crew of a homeward-bound West Indiaman. It must
indeed be confessed that Brother Jonathan loves tobacco 'not
wisely but too well,' and that the habits which are induced
by his manner of using it are far from 'elegant.' The truth
is, he neither smokes nor chews like a gentleman; he lives
in a land of liberty, and takes his tobacco when and where
he pleases. He spits as freely as he smok