Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/509

 THE GREEN BAG service was unknown in Virginia under the good old regime of tobacco. The preacher was not to be paid in coppers and nickels, with the right to criticise his sermon a dollar's worth, thrown into the contract. On the contrary, it was a law "That whoso ever shall disparage a minister without bringing sufficient proof to justify his re ports, whereby the minds of his parishioners may be alienated from him, and his minis try prove the less effectual by their prejudication, shall pay 500 pounds waight of tobacco." If further proof is wanted that the "weed" was a moral and religious factor, it is to be found in the law which provided "That whosoever shall absent himself from divine services any Sunday without allow able excuse shall forfeit a pound of tobacco, and he that absenteth himself a month shall pay 50 pounds of tobacco." There is no mention of the empty pew and "nonattendance-of-men evil," now so much com plained of in the churches, to be found in the annals of that era, when the tobacco patch and the church maintained the rela tions to one another provided for in the foregoing law. Verily, the American plant which had the unique honor of being discovered before the country, was a plant of functions in the Old Dominion. Neither "King Cotton" of the Southland nor the sacred bean of Boston, nor any other in the vegetable kingdom hath ever attained such a dizzy height of legal exaltation and privilege. But its like will ne'er be known again; it has long since reached the parting of the ways where as an institution it was labelled "A relic of ye olden tyme," and tobacco, the article of common uses, came into possession.

The plant once so connected with a great Commonwealth, that to "dig up, burne, or otherwise destroy it" was a crime against the state, punishable with death, has been touched by the cold hand of latter-day com mercialism, branded with the inevitable mark of the dollar, and its very name de graded with the vulgar prefixes — "short cut," "plug," and "stogie." Yes, it has come upon the democratic days of " Equal rights to all and special privileges to none"; right enough in principle, but, it must be confessed, somewhat lowering to standards. The "bottom leaves," the "illconditioned," the "slips" and "seconds" now have their inning. Even the unlovely, weather-beaten quid, and the lowly, for saken cigar stump — those cast-away relics of departed pleasure — now sing their resurgam; when gathered by gutter snipe and scavenger at twenty cents the bucket-full, they are "treated" to a new life in the nearest factory, and are made to glow again in carved meerschaum and naughty cigar ette, as "Pipeman's Pride," "Golden Glory," and "High Low Jack and the Game." Tell it not in Gath, that they live again also as middle filling, in Havannas, Vegueras, Re galias, and other "smokes," foreign in name, and fabulous in price, of American structure. Yes, the proud old plant, once the foster child of "The Govonor and Council and Burgesses of the Grand Assemblie of Vir ginia" has come to be only a common commodity, a proprietary chattel, stocked and controlled by a commercial octopus called the Tobacco Trust — Shades of the mighty! CHARLES TOWN, W. VA., June, '1905.