Page:Points of friction.djvu/221

 and Praxiteles and Plato and Lord Kitchener drank. When the Elgin marbles were set high over the Parthenon, when the Cathedral of Chartres grew into beauty, when "Hamlet" was first played at the Globe Theatre, men lived merrily and wisely without tobacco, tea, and coffee, but not without wine. Tobacco was given by the savage to the civilized world. It has an accidental quality which adds to its charm, but which promises consolation when those who are better than we want to be have taken it away from us. "I can understand," muses Dr. Mitchell, "the discovery of America, and the invention of printing; but what human want, what instinct, led up to tobacco? Imagine intuitive genius capturing this noble idea from the odours of a prairie fire!"

Charles Lamb pleaded that tobacco was at worst only a "white devil." But it was a persecuted little devil which for years suffered shameful indignities. We 209