Page:Elizabethan People.djvu/110

 We find in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (ii. 1) the following allusion to the adulteration of tobacco. "Three pence a pipe full, I will have made of all my half-pound of tobacco, and a quarter of a pound of colt's foot mixed with it to [eke] it out;" and in The Alchemist (i. 3) is another allusion to the practice.

In a note on this passage, Gifford says: "It should be observed that the houses of druggists were not merely furnished with tobacco, but with conveniences for smoking it. Every well frequented shop was an academy of this 'noble art,' where professors regularly attended to initiate the country aspirant. Abel's shop is very graphically described, and seems to be one of the fashionable kind. The maple block was for shredding the tobacco leaf, the silver tongs for holding the coal, and the fire of juniper for the customers to light their pipes. Juniper is not lightly mentioned: 'when once kindled' Fuller says, 'it is hardly quenched;' and Upton observes, from Cardan,