different species of roses in the flower-bed of an
horticulturist.

But the section of snuff-takers has, in common with all social categories,
its apostates, its false brethren.

For as sure as you carry about with you a snuff-box, of copper, of
tortoise-shell, or of horn (the material matters absolutely nothing), you
cannot fail to have met upon your path the man who carries no snuff-box,
and yet is continually taking snuff.

The man who carries no snuff-box is an intimate nuisance--a hand-in-hand
annoyance--a sort of authorised Jeremy Diddler to all snuff-takers.

He meets you everywhere. The first question he puts is not how "you do?"
he assails you instantly with "Have you such a thing as a pinch of snuff
about you?"

It is absolutely as if he said, "I have no snuff myself, but I know _you_
have--and you cannot refuse me levying a small contribution upon it."

If it were only _one_ pinch; but it is two--it is four--it is eight; it is
all the week--all the month--it is all year round. The man who carries no
snuff box is a regular Captain Macheath--a licensed Paul Clifford--to
everyone that does. He meets you on the highway, and summonses you to stop
by demanding "Your snuff-box or your life?"

A man can easily refuse to his most intimate friend his purse, or his
razor, or his wife, or his horse; but with what decency can he refuse
him--or to his coolest acquaintance even--a pinch of snuff? It is in this
that the evil _pinches_.

The snuff-taker who carries no snuff-box is aware of this--and woe to the
box into which his fingers gain admission to levy the pinch his nose
distrains upon.

There is no man who has the trick so aptly at his fingers' ends of
absorbing so much in one given pinch, as the man who carries no snuff box.
The quantity he takes proves he is not given to _samples_.

Properly speaking he is the landlord of all the boxes in the kingdom.
Those who carry snuff-boxes are only his tenants; and hold them merely by
virtue of a _rack-rent_, under him.

He is a perpetual plunderer--a petty purloiner--a pinching petitioner _in
forma pauperis_--a contraband dealer in snuff. However, he is in general
noted for his social qualities. He is affable, mild, harmless,
insinuating, yielding, and submissive. He never fails to compliment you
upon your good looks, and wonders in deep interest where you buy such
excellent snuff. He agrees with you that Sir Peter Laurie is the first
statesman of the day, and fl