Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 12:

The chief legitimate objection to cigarette smoking was well stated some years ago by the late Dr. Andrew Wilson. "I think cigarettes are apt to prove injurious," he said, "because a man will smoke far too much when he indulges in this form of the weed, and because I think it is generally admitted that cigarettes are apt to produce evil effects out of all proportion to the amount of tobacco which is apparently consumed." Excess can equally be found among cigar and pipe-smokers. The late Chancellor Parish, in his "Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect," tells a delightful story of a Sussex rustic's holiday—"May be you knows Mass [Master, the distinctive title of a married labourer] Pilbeam? No! doänt ye? Well, he was a very sing'lar marn was Mass Pilbeam, a very sing'lar marn! He says to he's mistus one day, he says, 'tis a long time, says he, sence I've took a holiday—so cardenly, nex marnin' he laid abed till purty nigh seven o'clock, and then he brackfustes, and then he goos down to the shop and buys fower ounces of barca, and he sets hisself down on the maxon [manure heap], and there he set, and there he smoked and smoked and smoked all the whole day long, for, says he 'tis a long time sence I've had a holiday! Ah, he was a very sing'lar marn—a very sing'lar marn indeed."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

What Queen Victoria, who hated tobacco and banished it from her presence and from her abodes as far as she could, would have thought and said of the extent to which cigarette-smoking is indulged in now by women, is a question quite unanswerable. Yet Queen Victoria once received a present of pipes and tobacco. By the hands of Sir Richard Burton the Queen had sent a damask tent, a silver pipe, and two silver trays to the King of Dahomey. That potentate told Sir Richard that the tent was very handsome, but too small; that the silver pipe did not smoke so well as his old red clay with a wooden stem; and that though he liked the trays very much, he thought them hardly large enough to serve as shields. He hoped that the next gifts would include a carriage and pair, and a white woman, both of which he would appreciate very much. However, he sent gifts in return to her Britannic Majesty, and among them were a West African state umbrella, a selection of highly coloured clothing materials, and some native pipes and tobacco for the Queen to smoke.

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