Title: St Nicotine of the Peace Pipe
Author: Edward Vincent Heward
Release date: April 8, 2018 [eBook #56946]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
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Transcriber’s Note: The title of this book is given both as ‘St Nicotine of the peace pipe’ and ‘St Nicotine or the peace pipe’. Readers may decide for themselves which is most fitting.
ST NICOTINE
OR
THE PEACE PIPE
Drawn & Engraved by F. W. Fairholt
Tobacco Plants.
1. Nicotiana Tabacum; 2. N. Rustica; 3. N. Persica.
[By permission of Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Ld.
ST NICOTINE
OF
THE PEACE PIPE
BY
EDWARD VINCENT HEWARD
WITH 4 FULL PAGE PLATES AND 5 TEXT CUTS
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Ltd.
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
1909
The history and associations of tobacco carry the thoughts back to the jubilant days when Good Queen Bess was the idol of her people, to the stirring times when bounding gaiety and lusty banter found expression in unrestrained mirth as readily in the open street as within doors. The writer’s aim in the following chapters has been to bring together (in a somewhat desultory way, it may be) the chief features of interest which the story of the ‘Indian’s herb’ presents to us to-day. The social element undoubtedly dominates all others; this, coupled with the primitive belief in its medicinal properties, at once secured for it the good-will of men longing for knowledge of the New World and ever ready to adopt an indulgence so alluring. That this feeling was universal is shewn by the rapidity with which the smoking habit spread over the Earth wherever there was a human habitation. No less remarkable is the sturdy tenacity with which men everywhere stuck to it despite the determined opposition of potentates and pontiffs.
In the eyes of her votaries St Nicotine’s virtues are rare and manifold. Indeed all sorts of pretty things have been said and sung in her praise, and as becomes a faithful devotee at her shrine the writer believes them all as implicitly—well, as a child believes fairy tales. Many a non-smoker when questioned about his indifference to her gracious influence has heaved a pensive sigh and lamented Dame Nature’s ill-usage in denying him the taste for the nicotian incense. Consolation comes not to him when told that the good genius has knit together a brotherhood who, regaled with her balmy breath, realize the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin; that on her approach petty vexations vanish into space, and fancy, untrammelled, roves in Parnassian bowers, or sees in the vapour rising from the bowl nebulous forms resembling those in the far-off starry sky.
The demon of insomnia flies from her presence, and upon the sleepless she breathes ‘tired nature’s sweet restorer.’ Faith born of experience bears willing testimony to this priceless virtue. Once upon a time, too remote to recall the year, it befell the writer of these lines to suffer from the effects of insomnia. Wakeful nights followed by comatose days passed into months, and the relief the poet Young had wooed in vain still held aloof. At last fortune smiled. Walking with a friend one evening a cigar was proffered him. Not being a smoker he declined the weed. Again urged to try it (without any suggestion of its narcotic properties) he did so and smoked it to the end. That night he fell into a sleep so profound that on waking the next morning the hours that had fled seemed but as a moment. Years have rolled by since then, but not an evening has passed unsolaced by the gentle anodyne.
Opponents of tobacco-smoking generally base their objection on the rather shaky ground of what they with emphasis term, ‘principle.’ A case of the kind cropped up a few years ago when Professor Huxley related the story of how he had become a convert to the creed of the tobacconist. It runs as follows:—
‘When I was a young man I went with a party of my friends to Holland. It happened that they were smokers and I was not. I did my best to fortify myself in determined resistance to the pernicious habit, which from my standpoint I looked upon as wholly indefensible. The tobacco plant belongs to a family of poisoners—certainly a poisonous family, what then could be said in its favour? Science and reason being opposed to it how could intelligent beings submit to its sway, and with so much assumed pleasure? Thus I mused with my back propped against the hotel wall where in a cosy room inside my friends were quietly enjoying themselves with their weeds and social gossip. I fought with myself. I fought against the seductive influence of the goddess, and failed. The flesh was too strong for philosophy: I crept in and joined them with my first cigar.’
A lady once confessed to the writer that she had all unwittingly followed in the wake of a smoker whose cigar shed on the air a fragrance so delicate that for a time it was quite irresistible. Doubtless many another could, if so minded tell of a similar experience. A good cigar indeed—Havana or Cuban leaf for preference—is an inspiration. A meerschaum pipe when ‘mellow, rich and ripe’ is a treasure; but cigarettes are becoming, if they have not already become, a nuisance.
Grateful memories of the weed are enshrined in the literature of every language; and many an old and odd volume have yielded to the gleaner the materials of which the following pages are made up. Some parts have already seen the light in the form of magazine articles, and for permission to republish these the writer tenders his thanks to Sir James Knowles, of the Nineteenth Century Review, to the Editor of Macmillan’s Magazine, and to Sylvanus Urban of the Gentleman’s Magazine.
And this may be the fitting place to acknowledge the courtesy and kindness of the principal (Mr. A. C. Wood) of the Statistical Office of H.M. Customs, who has furnished the tabular statement, which appears below, shewing the latest facts and figures on importations of tobacco, on the rate of consumption per head of population in the United Kingdom, and the revenue derived therefrom.
Statistical Office,
H.M. Customs.
Since the date of your article there have been some considerable changes in the fiscal position of Tobacco and the following are the chief changes in rates of duty per lb. since 1898:—
| Unmanufactured Tobacco. | Cigars. | Foreign Cavendish. | Other Sorts. | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | D | S | D | S | D | S | D | |||||
| 1898 | 2 | 8 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 3 | 5 | ||||
| 1900 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 10 | ||||
| 1904 { | 3 | 3 | } | Strips | 6 | 0 | 4 | 4 | { | 4 | 10 | Cigarettes. |
| 3 | 1½ | 3 | 10 | Other Sorts. | ||||||||
| 3 | 0 | Whole Leaf. | ||||||||||
The maximum limit of moisture allowed in manufacture of Tobacco was fixed in 1887 at 35 per cent., and was changed in 1898 to 30 per cent., and again raised in 1904 to 32 per cent.
The moisture naturally present in the kinds of Tobacco now imported averages about 14 per cent. I mention these facts because they are as you know of considerable importance in making calculations of the quantities sold over the counters of retailers to consumers.
Perhaps I may add that in 1904 differential rates were levied on Stripped or Stemmed Tobacco, that is upon Leaf from which the ‘midrib’ had been removed. The duty on ‘strips’ imported before the Budget was fixed at 3s. 1½d. the lb., and at 3s. 3d. on Strips brought here afterwards, while the duty on whole leaf Tobacco was settled at 3s. 0d. the lb.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
A. C. Wood,
Principal.
E. V. Heward, Esq.
| Imports all kinds | Value | Quantity Retained for Home use (All kinds) | Consumption per head of Population | Revenue 1904-5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lbs. | £ | Lbs. | Lbs. | £ | |
| ** 107,862,489 | 4,356,779 | * 83,374,670 | 1.95 | 13,184,767 | |
| ** 103,847,897 | * Raw | 80,896,242 | |||
| 4,014,592 | 2,478,428 | ||||
| 107,862,489 | 83,374,670 | ||||
| INTRODUCTORY | v |
| An Indulgence which promotes sociality, mirth, and day-dreams—Men hold to the weed regardless of opposition—St Nicotine’s manifold virtues—The non-smoker’s incapacity for enjoyment of smoking—Brings sleep to the sleepless—Opponents base their objection on principle—Prof. Huxley’s experience—Havana cigar the ideal smoke—Acknowledgments to Editors and H.M. Customs. | |
| A SYMPOSIUM | |
| CHAPTER I | 1 |
| Part I | |
| Tobacco smoking thought much of in Elizabeth’s reign—Drawing the smoke into the lungs and ejecting it through the nostrils provokes hilarity in the city—Sir John Beaumont’s Metamorphosis of Tobacco—Conceives the idea of a Parliament of the immortals to determine upon the composition of tobacco—Drayton on Beaumont’s early death—Jupiter calls a council to consider the odic essence which has calmed his anger—England’s great smokers from Raleigh to Dr. Parr give an account of their experiences. | |
| CHAPTER II | 15 |
| Part II | |
| Carlyle as a persistent preacher of the gospel of silence with his pipe—Frederick the Great’s Tobacco Parliament—Carlyle’s early experience in smoking and his first pinch of snuff—Charles Lamb and his associates over the pipe—Bismarck’s Bund story—Divergent French views on the use of tobacco—Robert Hall, Spurgeon, Capt. Marryat, Fairholt, Inglis, Thackeray, and Bulwer Lytton, all express opinions favourable to tobacco smoking. | |
| CHAPTER III | 29 |
| THE HOME OF THE INDIAN WEED | |
| Columbus secures Queen Isabel’s good-will and help—Overcomes all difficulties and sets sail in three small vessels from Palos on his great enterprise westward—Mutiny suppressed—San Salvador reached after three months’ toil—The officers land—Natives friendly—Two captured and brought on board the Santa Maria—A gladsome sight meets their eyes—Cuba reached; the most beautiful island ever beheld—Clothed with perennial verdure—Two of the crew sent to explore—Natives discovered smoking fire-brands—They conceive a passion for smoking—Columbus collects rarities to take with him to Spain—Reports to the king and his consort the achievement of his project—Is received with honour and made high admiral of a new and powerful fleet with which he returns to the West Indies—Gonzalo Oviedo, Inspector-general of the newly discovered country—Fra Ramono Pane sends Peter Martyr the first written account of tobacco and native method of using it—Snuff-taking in France—The origin of the name tobacco—Red Indian’s use of the weed—Oviedo dislikes tobacco—The discovery of South America—The Aztecs of Mexico—The Italian traveller Benzoni describes the plant and its uses among the natives—His strong aversion to it—The origin of the plant related by the chief of the Susquehanna tribe. | |
| CHAPTER IV | 47 |
| TOBACCO IN RELATION TO HEALTH AND CHARACTER | |
| The Chancellor of the Exchequer on the consumption of tobacco—His condemnation of the smoking habit by those who have enough to eat—Board of Trade returns—Statistics on the past and present rate of consumption per head of population in England and other countries—The quantity of tobacco consumed compared with the average consumption of wheat and the money value of each—The use made of cast-away cigar-ends—The opinions of Michael Drayton and Robert Burton—Case against youths smoking—The Cuban leaf—The effects of smoking on the character of the Turks—Mr. E. W. Lane on the Oriental method of smoking—Clarendon’s views on tobacco’s influence in diplomacy—The three kinds of tobacco used in commerce—Botanical description—The chemist’s account of the composition of the weed—Shakespeare’s ‘hebenon’—Sir B. W. Richardson’s experiments with the smoke of tobacco—Tobacco innoxious compared with alcohol—Prof. Johnston’s experiments and observations—Observed effects on German thinkers—Pre-eminent among great smokers stand Hobbes, Newton, Parr, Aldrich, Hall, Carlyle and Tennyson—Experience the true guide. | |
| CHAPTER V | 73 |
| THE USE AND ABUSE OF TOBACCO | |
| Differences of temperament interfere with general enjoyment of the weed—Ground upon which all can agree—Its germicidal action demonstrated in laboratory experiments—Faith of our forefathers in tobacco’s all-healing properties—Particularly as a destroyer of insect life on plants and animals—Liebault’s account of Nicot’s introduction of tobacco into France and experiments on old sores and wounds—Fame of throughout Portugal, France—Catherine de Medici plants seeds of in her garden—George Buchanan’s distrust of anything which bears her name—Italy’s first instalment of the weed received from Spain—Spenser in the Faërie Queene speaks of ‘divine tobacco’—William Lyly calls it the ‘holy herb nicotian’—Henry Buttes on tobacco as a dietetic—Dr. Gardiner describes its use in medicine—Harleian Miscellany on tobacco—Dr. Thorius’s Hymnus Tabac—Pepys’ experience with tobacco—Dr. Willis on its prophylactic effects in the plague of 1666—Dr. Diemerbroeck finds it kills contagion during plague in Holland 1635-6—Coleridge in Cologne—Medical profession’s changed attitude towards tobacco—Mr. Solly, of St. Thomas’s Hospital, proclaims a crusade against smoking—Dr. Murray at a later date speaks highly in its favour from army experience—Private McCarthy’s quiet pipe in the hospital yard—Soldiers’ experiences in South Africa—Government’s changing practices in regard to contraband tobacco—Soldiers sent out in troop-ships have first claim. | |
| CHAPTER VI | 95 |
| ON THE ANTIQUITY OF TOBACCO-SMOKING | |
| The beginnings of history—Ancestor worship—Man’s instinctive craving for narcotics and stimulants—Ancient historic allusions to smoking or burning of vegetable substances—Lieut. Walpole’s account of an Arabic MS. which came into his hands at Mosul—Nimrod a tobacco-smoker—Assyrian cylinders in the British Museum—Noah a smoker, a Greek Church tradition—The Moslem sage and the origin of the tobacco plant—Eulia Effendi’s story of a tobacco pipe found in an old wall—Tobacco unknown in Turkey before 1610—Dr. Yates mistakes an Egyptian painting representing glass-blowers for a smoking party—Both Greeks and Romans inhaled fumes of tussilago through a reed or pipe for the cure of coughs and difficult breathing—Abbé Cocket and Dr. Bruce on old clay pipes found in Normandy and among ruins in Britain—Clay pipes found in Scotland and Ireland—Legendary lore respecting their origin and use—The weed and the Portuguese in India and Java—Palias and Meyen on the plant in India and China—The Lazarists, Gabet and Huc, in Tartary and Thibet—The cultivation and use of tobacco in China—The supposed antiquity of the habit among the Chinese, who in their prehistoric migrations may have carried seeds of the plant to America. | |
| CHAPTER VII | 117 |
| A GLIMPSE OF SOCIAL LIFE IN JAPAN, AS DISCLOSED BY THE WEED | |
| The Japanese—Marco Polo’s mention of Japan and its people—Pinto,
Portugal’s pioneer in eastern seas—Lands at
Nagasaki in 1545—Friendly reception—News of the
event reaches Manila and Goa—Spanish merchant vessels
with Francis Xavier speedily arrived at Bungo—Warm
welcome—Tobacco and smoking, a new revelation to
these primitive people—Good work done by Xavier and
his coadjutors among the sick and needy—The Shogun,
Iyeyasu, permits free intercourse and unrestricted trade—Spaniards
and Portuguese accused of overreaching
practices, and of draining the country of its gold—Jesuits
and Friars swarm in Japan and bring upon themselves
disgrace and ultimate expulsion—William Adams the first
Englishman to set foot in Japan—His rapid rise in favour
and fortune—The arrival of Dutch merchantmen—Helped
by Adams to secure a trade basis at Firando—Adams
desires to return home, but is put off from time to time—He
writes letters to England telling of himself, and
inviting London merchants to trade with Japan—They
do so, and vessels laden with merchandise are despatched
under the command of Captain Saris, who bears a letter
from King James to the Emperor of Japan, resulting in
England’s first commercial treaty with that country—Adams
dies in Japan after twenty years’ residence, loved
and honoured by all. An Edict against smoking falls into abeyance—Family records of smoking in 1605-7—Excellent properties of tobacco-smoking enumerated by an old writer—Objections to its use—The theft of the golden pipe—Smoking now universal in Japan—An ‘At Home’—Men’s revolt against women’s authority as to when and where to smoke—Primitive habits among the peasantry—Cultivation and revenue—Sir Earnest Satow statistics—Reflections. |
|
| CHAPTER VIII | 142 |
| STRAY LEAVES FROM THE INDIAN WEED | |
| The late Poet Laureate’s (Tennyson) love of tobacco-smoking—Science detects poisonous elements in the exotic—The philosophy of smoking—The only thing in life that fumes without fretting and assuages the fretful—The bachelor’s love of seclusion with his pipe—Napoleon’s first and last attempt at smoking—A distraught youth and an Oriental sage, an eastern view of the virtue of the weed—Raleigh and the New World—His expedition to explore the coast of the El Dorado and win renown for England and his idolized Queen Bess—England’s first smokers—Hawkins, not Raleigh, the first to bring tobacco to this country—Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth—The wager as to the weight of the smoke exhaled from a pipeful of tobacco—King James’s ‘Counterblaste to Tobacco’—Its home cultivation and manufacture—Ben Jonson’s ‘Alchemist’—‘Bartholomew Faire’—Dr. Barclay on sophistication of tobacco—Old Rome smoked coltsfoot and leaves of the lettuce—Paper warfare over the virtues or vices of the Indian weed—Joshua Sylvester sends a ‘volley of holy shot’ against the ‘idolatrous weed’—Samuel Rowland’s ‘Knave of Clubbs,’ a humorous satire on tobacco-smoking—Eastern potentates’ treatment of smokers of the Frankish novelty—Russian atrocities inflicted on users of the weed—Foreign Governments begin to see in it an easy means of augmenting revenue—Peter the Great invites English tobacco merchants to Moscow in order to establish a factory there for the manufacture of tobacco—Queen Anne in Council disapproves of the scheme, and orders our Envoy to destroy the works and return the workmen to their homes. | |
| CHAPTER IX | 169 |
| SOCIAL GOSSIP ABOUT THE WEED | |
| George Wither’s song on tobacco-smoking—Undergoes numerous alterations by later writers—Mr. Chappell, through Mr. Payne Collier, traces the original song to Wither—Bishop Fletcher succumbs to over-indulgence in the pipe—Rev. W. Bredon resorts to the hemp cut off the ends of the church bell-ropes as a substitute for tobacco—Raleigh carries the novelty to Court and makes smoking popular—Merriment in the city over the ‘tobacconists’—Ben Jonson’s mention of smoking—‘Every Man out of his Humour’—‘The Gipsies Metamorphosed’—‘Bartholomew Faire’—Dekker’s ‘Gull’s Horn Book’—His ‘Satiromastix’—Women smokers—The daughters of Louis XIV. smoke in their private apartments—England’s paper warfare over the merits or demerits of the weed—Joshua Sylvester supports the King’s ‘Counterblaste’—Heavy duty on tobacco and its ruinous cost to the consumer—Peter Campbell’s will—Sir Edwin Sandys on the sum paid for tobacco received from Spain—Dr. Everard on the ‘Wonderful Vertues of Tobacco taken in a Pipe’—Dr. Barclay’s Nepenthes—De Rochefort tells of smoking in rural England—Mentions the case of a Spaniard using a bit of the cable end in lieu of tobacco—Of smoking in bed—Mission’s remarks about the effects of tobacco on Englishmen—His verses in praise of smoking—Dr. Aldrich, Dean of Christchurch, Oxford—His song on tobacco, to be smoked while singing—His higher claims to admiration. | |
| CHAPTER X | 184 |
| THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY AND SMOKING PIPES | |
| Various kinds and sources of supply—Qualities due to climate, soil or other causes—Natural qualities determine destination—Strong kinds find favour in North America, mild in Europe—Cuba’s leaf richest in excellences desired by smokers—Cuba’s make-up the model for the rest of the tobacco producing world—The effect of the McKinley tariff on Cuban cigar manufacture—The highly prized and priced Havana legitimas—Small area over which the Havana plant is grown—Harvesting and curing operations in Florida—Packing of bales for exportation—Bonded warehousing accommodation and its regulations—Different kinds of cigars suited to different seasons and climates—Manila cheroots, their kinds and manufacture—Government monopoly and its removal—Illicit growth of the plant by mountaineers—Number of employés, their work and wages—Cheroots used in lieu of coin—Various kinds of tobacco offered to the consumer—Invisible life infests tobacco leaves—Tobacco culture prohibited in England except in Physic Gardens—Removed in 1886—Failure of English cultivation—Manufacture of cigars—Inequality of Customs duty—Historical view of tobacco pipes—Clay pipes—Meerschaum, its origin and manufacture—Briar-root and other materials used for pipes. |
| Tobacco Plant | frontispiece | |
| face p. | ||
| Sir Walter Raleigh | ” | 6 |
| Departure of Columbus (from a rare old painter) | ” | 22 |
| Queen Elizabeth | ” | 132 |
| A Chinese Pipe | 112 | |
| Indian Pipe—Heads found in Mound City, Ohio | 113 | |
| A Japanese Pipe | 129 | |
| Duc de Sully | 153 | |
| Early Seventeenth-century Smokers | 173 | |
In the early days of her advent in these isles St Nicotine stood high in the land. For she had come bearing credentials from France and Portugal testifying to her many virtues as a healer of the sick as well as a social comfort. And sober-minded folk would sit outside their doors, pipe in hand, placidly inhaling the grateful vapour of the precious herb a kind Providence had sent them to assuage the ills flesh is heir to. But the quick eye and ready wit of the city wags saw the matter in a different light. The Spanish fashion of smoking, namely, of drawing the smoke into the lungs and ejecting it through ‘the organs of the nose,’ afforded them endless amusement, and sportive jests were heard on all sides about the men who made chimneys of their noses. The important part the exotic played in life’s comedy led the youthful aspirant to literary fame, Sir John Beaumont, to think that he could not do better than soar on the wings of the weed to the Parnassus he had already in view. Barely twenty, full of exuberance and lofty ideals, he poured forth his musings in a grand imitation of heroic verse. His work is entitled, ‘The Metamorphosis of Tobacco,’[1] (1602) and is dedicated to his friend ‘Maister Michael Drayton,’ whom he asks to take up the lines,
Ambitious to excel and full of noble endeavour he exclaims,
He conceives the idea of a parliament of the elements assembled to hear the complaint of Prometheus that his work is imperfect. He calls for help, and the Earth is invoked. But ‘Grandame Ops her grieved head did shake.’ She declares however that,
Despite of Fate the elements combine to form the plant. Their work accomplished, it is found that Tellus had tempered too much terrene corruption in its composition. But for this
Jupiter is enraged at the daring attempt to usurp his divine prerogative and banishes the plant to an unknown region. After long searching the graces discover it in the palace of the great Montezuma. They are royally entertained and wish for no greater happiness than to remain eternally regaling themselves with the vapour of the divine herb. Another flight of fancy reveals the ‘sweet and sole delight of mortal men’ as a nymph of Virginia receiving the visits of Jupiter clad in the garb of a shepherd. Juno, ever watchful over the movements of her lord, discovers the intrigue, and with threatening gesture storms at the poor thing and transforms her into the Indian weed.
It may be that the divine afflatus which Drayton, speaking of Marlowe, says, ‘rightly should possess a poet’s brain,’ imaging ‘those brave translunary things that the first poets had,’ had not yet descended upon the young poet of Grace Dieu. But it cannot be denied him that his diction is stately, and that at times he displays flashes of grandeur. Chalmers remarks of him that he brought to his task ‘a genius uncommonly fertile and commanding.’ All through his brief career he had yearned after a true poet’s renown. ‘No earthly gift,’ he wrote, ‘lasts after death but fame.’ And he sighed over the thought that all his labour should be left incomplete—‘That’s my vexation, that’s my only grief.’ His longing for posthumous fame Drayton tenderly notices in the following lines:
It is hard to say what plagues Drayton refers to, but it does seem unkind of Elizabethan scholars to have so neglected Sir John Beaumont, the purity and simplicity of whose life and elevated tone of work place him in marked contrast to his more versatile and distinguished brother, Francis.
Leaving the domain of the poet let us turn our gaze for a moment towards the heavens. Night’s sable mantle shrouds a sleeping world, and all is repose save the spirit of our dreams. Freed from control the ever active one flits at will in the realms of fairy-land, overleaping all difficulties, revelling in phantasms new and wonderful till day dawns, when she returns to her abode in man’s heavy brain to lighten the labour of his daily toil, and to store up memories of a world closed to mortal eyes.
A distant murmur as of an approaching storm disturbs the stillness of the night, from gathering clouds serpent-tongued lightning flashes across the sky; the furies rage, the curtains of the heavens open and lo! Jupiter appears glowing with unwonted fire. He vows he will suffer no longer the flouting scorn of imperious Juno, and with anger-distended nostrils he sniffs the ethereal air. But what is this that steals over his heated senses? Subduing, soothing, consoling more sweetly than incense from Aphrodite’s favoured altars. It ascends in cloudy wavelets from the abodes of mortals. He determines to hold a council of the gods and summons thereto the heroes of Earth famed throughout Elysium for their knowledge of the odic essence whose spirit has entered his own and quelled the rising of a conjugal storm.
Silently there glides into view a host of genial witnesses to St Nicotine’s balmy influence over the troubled spirits of mortals. Leading the spectral throng are Ben Jonson and Drummond, Beaumont and Fletcher, Dekker and Overbury, swathed in clouds of vapour as if comforting themselves with the old delectable pastime. A little to the rear, pale in the majesty of thought, are Shakespeare and Bacon, Spenser and Newton. Leaning to his friend Shakespeare, Bacon whispers, ‘No doubt the weed hath power to lighten the body of mortals and enable them to shake off uneasiness. But where is Raleigh? He paid devotion to his divinity most constantly, and ought to be able to speak of what return he got for all his worship.’
‘You know, Drummond, as well as I do, that I always did love the weed, in spite of all that King James said against it. Did I not make my prince of swaggerers, Captain Bobadil (who was to me what Falstaff was to Will Shakespeare) descant on the fragrant theme, thus:—
‘“I have been in the Indies where neither myself nor a dozen gentlemen more of my knowledge have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world for over a space of one-and-twenty weeks, but the juice of this simple only. Therefore it cannot be but ’tis divine—especially your Trinadado; your Nicotian is good also. By Hercules! I do hold it before any prince in Europe to be the most sovereign and precious herb that ever the earth tendered for the use of man.”’
‘But, O worthy Ben, did not the master over-charge his ‘prentice when he allowed the braggart to lay on the tinsel with so heavy a hand?’
‘Listen to me, my masters, let Ben Jonson read the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet without blenching if he can, for that might advance him in merit; he would acknowledge that Thomas Dekker can kick.’
‘Hist! feather-brained gossip; proclaim not so loudly thy kinship with the asinine family.’
Advancing with measured step the noble Raleigh appears and is greeted with the cry:—
To which the illustrious knight made answer, ‘Not so, gentle spirits of the past; to me it was not given to be the discoverer, or the first to bring to my countrymen a knowledge of the blessed herb whose sobering and soothing virtues lend man strength to bear with tranquility the injustice of the powerful. The honour you would do unto me belongs of right to others who were before me in the fray of battle and adventure. Humble service have I rendered at her shrine, receiving thereby sweet refreshment unstinted, even when on the threshold of thy domain, O mighty Jupiter.
‘Yet, by your leave, I will relate something of the wonderful tales told of this weed by the adventurers who first brought tidings of it to Europe, and of the New World and its people they had discovered in the far-off western seas.
Sir Walter Raleigh.
‘The chiefs and headmen of the Indians avow that the herb is a most precious gift of the Great Spirit who created them, and who rules over the affairs of their daily lives. He it was in ages long past, when all the different tribes were warring one against another, had taught them the peace-inspiring virtues of the plant. He it was who, out of a fragment broken from the red rock, had fashioned for their guidance the first peace-pipe. And it came to pass in this wise: The Master of Life, the Great Spirit that broods over creation, descended to the summit of the mountain; he called his children together, and they obedient to the divine command assembled in infinite numbers to hearken to his will. Then there came forth from the mountain a voice, crying, “Listen, O children of the redskin, to the words of your Great Father. Let your deliberations, domestic as well as public, be conducted under the soothing influence of the herb of life, the divine uppówoc. Let the pipe be to you a symbol of peace between you yourselves and all the tribes of men. In loving brotherhood let it be passed from the lips of those famous in the war of words as in the strife of battle; from those seated on the front bench in the possession of treasure to those of the hungry of the assembled senators who have nought but who fain would have all. Let the smoke-cloud that ascends from the calumet be to you a pledge of peace, of personal amity and good-will. Then shall your compacts one with another be held sacred before me, and the war-club be buried deep in the earth. Henceforward shall friendship and fraternity be yours for evermore—till, alas, they of the pale face have grabbed from you your lands, and the red man hath become a stranger and an outcast in the country of his birth.”
‘Thus spoke the Master of Life to his children of the redskin. Having fashioned with wondrous curves the emblem of happiness out of stone of the red rock, he filled the bowl with the leaves of the sacred herb, and commanded the lightning to kindle it into flame. High up on the mountain over their heads he smoked the first great symbol of peace among the nations. He told the assembled multitude that the rock, out of which the pipe was made, was formed of the flesh of their grandfathers, long ages ago, when the world was deluged and the people of the earth destroyed. Seeing the gathering of the waters, the children of the forest and of the prairie fled to the high lands, thinking thus to save themselves. The waters pursued them; they were overwhelmed in one mighty mass and their bodies were converted into the red sandstone rock of the mountain, therefore is it good medicine.
‘Yet one escaped the flood. A maiden, Kwaptahw, finding herself bereft of kindred, lay disconsolate on the mountain ridge. Then it came to pass that espying her from afar, the great war-eagle came to her side. She clung to the lord of the air, and he carried her to a place of safety high up on an adjacent cliff.
‘Then like the murmur of distant waters, the voice of the great spirit gradually melted away.