Page:The Anatomy of Tobacco.pdf/172

 love, and is wont, as we have seen, to look under a fair outside, and see the ruddy skin grow yellow and wrinkled, and at last, bursting asunder, disclose the grinning jaws, and holes for eyes, and layers of bone, about which, when they are covered over, there is such a pitiful to-do and exclamation. Thus, with much tobacco, many books, and a few friends, his life goes on, till at last the inchoative-contingent draws to an end, and the ultimate begins.

And when it has come to this, and he knows that he has but a few pipes more to smoke in this world, he taketh care that they be smoked well and with a good grace, until it cometh to ultimus tubulus, the very last pipe, and dying as he hath lived, neither hoping, fearing, nor regretting, he departs hence, and becomes but a memory of a life well lived, and a death bravely endured. But if this is a woeful matter——what shall we say of the man who by his own choice leaves off to smoke, and takes to himself some ribbon as a proclamation of his