ies into the highest ecstacies when he learns
that it is some of George the Fourth's sold-off stock. He even
acknowledges that Universal Suffrage is the only thing that can save the
nation, and affects to be quite astonished that he has left his box behind
him. He will beg to be remembered to your wife, and leaves you after
begging for "the favour of another pinch." Where is the man whose nature
would not be susceptible of a _pinch_ when invoked in the name of his
wife?

Goldsmith recommends a pair of boots, a silver pencil, or a horse of small
value, as an infallible specific for getting rid of a troublesome guest.
He always had the satisfaction to find he never came back to return them.

But with the man who carries no snuff-box this specific would lose its
infallibility. It would be folly to lend him your snuff-box, for at this
price snuff would lose all its flavour, all its perfume for him. The best
box to give him would be perhaps a box on the ear.

If he were obliged to buy his own snuff, it would give him no sensation.
The strongest would not make him sneeze, or wring from the sensibility of
his eyes the smallest tribute to its pungency. He would turn up his nose
at it, or, at the best, use it as sand-dust to receipt his washerwoman's
bills with.

These feelings aside, the man who carries no snuff-box is a good member of
society; that is to say, quite as good a one as the man who does carry a
snuff-box. He is in general a good friend (as long as he has the _entree_
of your box), a good parent, a good tenant, a good customer, a good voter,
a good eater, a good talker, and especially a good judge of snuff. He
knows by one touch, by one sniff, by one _coup d'oeil_, the good from the
bad, the old from the new, the fragrant from the filthy, the colour which
is natural from the colour which is coloured. If any one should want to
lay in a stock of snuff, let him take the man who carries no snuff with
him: his _ipse dixit_ may be relied upon with every certainty. He will
choose it as if he were buying it for himself, and in return will never
forget to look upon it as a property he is entitled to fully as much as
you who have paid for it; for, in fact, would you be in possession of the
snuff if he had not chosen it for you?

As for his complaint, it is like hydrophilia; no remedy has as yet been
invented for it; and we can with comfortable consciences predict that, as
long as snuff is taken, and men continue to carry