Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 12:

And what more fitting emblem of peace could be chosen than the calumet, the proffered pipe? Tobacco, whatever its enemies may have said, or may yet say, is the friend of peace, the foe of strife, and the promoter of geniality and good fellowship. Mrs. Battle, whose serious energies were all given to the great game of whist, unbent her mind, we are told, over a book. Most men unbend over a pipe, even if the book is an accompaniment.

To the solitary man the well-seasoned tube is an invaluable companion. If he happen, once in a way, to have nothing special to do and plenty of time in which to do it, he naturally fills his pipe as he draws the easy-chair on to the hearthrug, and knows not that he is lonely. If he have a difficult problem to solve, he just as naturally attacks it over a pipe. It is true that as the smoke-wreaths ring themselves above his head, his mind may wander off into devious paths of reverie, and the problem be utterly forgotten. Well, that is, at least, something for which to be grateful, for the paths of reverie are the paths of pleasantness and peace, and problems can usually afford to wait.
"Over a pipe!" Why the words bring up innumerable pleasant associations. The angler, having caught the coveted prize, refills his pipe, and with the satisfied sense of duty done, as the rings curl upward he reviews the struggle and glows again with victory. At the end of any day's occupation, especially one of pleasurable toil—whether it be shooting or hunting, or walking or what not—what can be pleasanter than to let the mind meander through the course of the day's proceedings over a pipe?

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

A frequent sign-device among dealers in snuff was the Crown and Rasp. The oldest method of taking snuff, says Larwood, in the "History of Signboards," was "to scrape it with a rasp from the dry root of the tobacco plant; the powder was then placed on the back of the hand and so snuffed up; hence the name of râpé (rasped) for a kind of snuff, and the common tobacconist's sign of La Carotte d'or (the golden root) in France." Râpé became in English "rappee," familiar in snuff-taking days as the name for a coarse kind of snuff made from the darker and ranker tobacco leaves. The list of prices and names given by Wimble, a snuff-seller, about 1740, and printed in Fairholt's "History of tobacco," contains eighteen different kinds of rappee-English, best English, fine English, high-flavoured coarse, low, scented, composite, &c. The rasps for obtaining this râpé, continues Larwood, "were carried in the waistcoat pocket, and soon became articles of luxury, being carved in ivory and variously enriched. Some of them, in ivory and inlaid wood, may be seen at the Hotel Cluny in Paris, and an engraving of such an object occurs in 'Archæologia,' vol. xiii. One of the first snuff-boxes was the so-called râpé or grivoise box, at the back of which was a little space for a piece of the root, whilst a small iron rasp was contained in the middle. When a pinch was wanted, the root was drawn a few times over the iron rasp, and so the snuff was produced and could be offered to a friend with much more grace than under the above-mentioned process with the pocket-grater."

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