“And our poor dream of happiness Vanisheth, so
Farewell.”——Motherwell.
After a feast, the prudent and thrifty housewife will gather up the fragments that remain, if for no other purpose than to distribute them amongst the poor.
 
It was the constant habit of a certain elderly man of business, so long as he could stoop for the purpose, to pick up and stow away every pin and scrap of paper, or end of string, which he saw lying about on his premises. And when he could bend no longer to perform the operation himself, he would stand by the truant fragment, and vociferate loudly for one of his apprentices to come and “gather up the cord and string,” adding “’tis a pity they should spile.”
 
Approaching to the conclusion of our task, we have followed the old gentleman’s advice, and collected the odd pieces that have fallen to the ground in the course of our work, convinced that thrift is praiseworthy, and although only “Odds and Ends,” there may be enough of interest in them to warrant you in adding347 “’tis a pity they should spile.”
 
Tobacco ends in smoke. We began with the former, it is but a natural consequence that we should end with the latter. Somewhere we have read a “smoke vision of life.” Some people have but a smoky or foggy vision of life—they have sad eyes, poor travellers, and can see nothing for the fog that surrounds them—they live in a mist, and die without being missed. Forgive the transgression, good friend, the obscurity of the subject is to blame, and the pun was written before we had made ourselves aware of its presence. Let it pass on, it will soon be lost in the smoke. An old piper believes that there is generally something racy, decided, and original in the man who both smokes and snuffs. Outwardly, he may have a kippered appearance, and his voice may grate on the ear like a scrannel pipe of straw, but think of the strong or beautiful soul that body enshrines! Do you imagine, oh, lean-hearted member of the Anti-Snuff and Tobacco Club, that the dark apostle standing before us will preach with less power, less unction, less persuasive eloquence, because he snuffs over the psalm book, and smokes in the vestry between the forenoon and afternoon service? Does his piety ooze through his pipe, or his earnestness end in smoke? Was Robert Hall less eloquent than Massillon or Chalmers, because he could scarcely refrain from lighting his hookah in the pulpit? Answer us at your leisure—could Tennyson have brought down so magnificently the Arabian heaven upon his nights; dreamed so divinely of Cleopatra, Iphigenia, and Rosamond; pictured so richly the charmed sleep of the Eastern princess in her enchanted palace, with her “full black ringlets downward rolled;” or painted so soothingly the languid picture of the Lotos-eaters, if he had never experienced the mystic inspiration of tobacco? Could John Wilson—peace348 to his princely shade—have filled his inimitable papers with so much fine sentiment, radiant imagery, pathos, piquancy, and point, without the aid of his silver snuff-box? Deprive the Grants and Macgregors of their mulls and nose spoons of bone, and you cut the sinews of their strength—you destroy the flower of the British army. Pluck the calumet of peace from the lips of the red Indian, and in the twinkling of an eye your beautiful scalp will be dangling at his girdle. Tear his “gem adorned chibouque” from the mouth of the Turk, and the Great Bear by to-morrow’s dawn will be grinning on his haunches in Constantinople. Clear Germany of tobacco smoke, and Goethe would groan in his grave, Richter would revisit the glimpses of the moon, philology would fall down in a fatal fit of apoplexy over the folios of her fame, and poetry would shriek her death-shriek to see the transcendental philosophy expire. Shake the quids from the mouths of the merry mariners of England—cast their pig-tail upon the waters, and commerce would become stagnant in all our ports—our gallant war-fleet would rot at its stations, and Britain would never boast the glories of another Trafalgar. Tell Yankeedom that smoking is no more to be permitted all over the world, under penalty of death, and soon the melancholy pine forests would wave over the dust of an extinguished race. In fine, were the club to which you belong to succeed in its attempt, which it cannot, the earth would stand still, like the sun of old upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, and the planets would clothe themselves with sackcloth for the sudden death of their sister sphere!
 
There is extant, in an old work written three centuries since, a curious paragraph which we had well nigh forgotten. It refers to Canada.349 “There groweth a certain kind of herbe, whereof in summer they make great provision for all the yeere, and only the men use of it; and first they cause it to be dried in the sunne, then wear it about their neckes, wrapped in a little beaste’s skinne, made like a little bagge, with a hollow peece of stone or wood like a pipe; then, when they please, they make poudre of it, and then put it in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a coal of fire upon it, at the other end suck so long, that they fill their bodies full of smoke, till that it cometh out of their mouth and nostrils, even as out of the tonnell of a chimney.”
 
Methinks it had been well had every Canadian been also favoured with a Saint Betsy, as a companion in life, otherwise there had been fire as well as smoke. It is now some time since the inimitable Punch introduced Saint Betsy to the world, and that she may not altogether be excluded from our future “fireside saints,” we will give her legend a place in our “Odds and Ends.”
 
“St. Betsy was wedded to a knight who sailed with Raleigh, and had brought home tobacco, and the knight smoked. But he thought that St. Betsy, like other fine ladies of the Court, would fain that he should smoke out of doors, nor taint with tobacco smoke the tapestry, whereupon the knight would seek his garden, his orchard, and, in any weather, smoke sub Jove. Now it chanced, as the knight smoked, St. Betsy came to him and said, ‘My lord, pray ye come into the house;’ and the knight went with St. Betsy, who took him into a newly cedared room, and said, ‘I pray my lord henceforth smoke here, for is it not a shame that you, who are the foundation and prop of your house, should have no place to put your head into and smoke?’ And St. Betsy led him to a350 chair, and with her own fingers filled him a pipe; and from that time the knight sat in the cedar chamber and smoked his weed.”
 
No pipe, no smoke, no dreams! Never again, on a beautiful summer’s day would two young Ottoman swains sit smoking under a tree, by the side of a purling stream, hearing the birds sing, and seeing the flowers in bloom, to become the actors in a scene like that described in one of their own songs. By and bye came a young damsel, her eyes like two stars in the nights of the Ramazan. One of the swains takes his pipe from his mouth, and “sighing smoke,” gazes at her with delight. The other demands why his wrapt soul is sitting in his eyes, and he avows himself the adorer of the veiled fair. “Her eyes,” says he, “are black, but they shine like the polished steel, nor is the wound they inflict less fatal to the heart.” The other swain ridicules his passion, and bids him re-fill his pipe. “Ah, no!” cries the lover, “I enjoy it no more; my heart is as a fig thrown into a thick leafy tree, and a bird with bright eyes has caught it and holds it fast.”
 
Hearken to the story of Abou Gallioun, the father of the pipe-bowl, and then laugh if you will at the votaries of the marvellous weed. A mountaineer of Lebanon, a man young and tall, and apparently well to do, for his oriental costume was rich and elegant, established himself at Tripoli, in Syria. He resided at an hotel, and astonished every one with a bowl at the end of his pipe stem of enormous dimensions. Some days after his arrival he was seen to seat himself at the corner of a street, to rest the bowl of his pipe on the ground, and to take from his pocket a little tripod and a coffee-pot. Having filled his coffee-pot, he put the tripod upon the bowl of his pipe, and stood his coffee-pot thereon. He then proceeded to smoke, and at the same time351 to boil the water for his coffee. This sight caused the passers-by to stop, and a crowd collected in the street so as to obstruct the thoroughfare. The police came to clear the passage, and, at the same time, the Pacha was informed of the circumstance, and consulted as to what should be done. The Pacha gave instructions that as the stranger did harm to no one, he was to be allowed to make his coffee in the street, for the street was open to all, hoping that when it rained he would certainly go away. The police were, therefore, ordered to prevent any crowding around the mountaineer, and to take especial care that he received no insult, lest he should then complain to the Emir of the mountain of his ill-treatment. The mountaineer having heard of the instructions of the Pacha, continued to drink his coffee and smoke his pipe as before, in the presence of numbers of curious spectators. This exhibition continued daily, till the news penetrated into the harems, and the women came to see a man make his coffee upon the bowl of his pipe—a thing they had never before heard of, and which, till now, had never occurred.
 
The mountaineer loved to converse with the passers-by, when he told them that h............