Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 12:

And what more fitting emblem of peace could be chosen than the calumet, the proffered pipe? Tobacco, whatever its enemies may have said, or may yet say, is the friend of peace, the foe of strife, and the promoter of geniality and good fellowship. Mrs. Battle, whose serious energies were all given to the great game of whist, unbent her mind, we are told, over a book. Most men unbend over a pipe, even if the book is an accompaniment.

To the solitary man the well-seasoned tube is an invaluable companion. If he happen, once in a way, to have nothing special to do and plenty of time in which to do it, he naturally fills his pipe as he draws the easy-chair on to the hearthrug, and knows not that he is lonely. If he have a difficult problem to solve, he just as naturally attacks it over a pipe. It is true that as the smoke-wreaths ring themselves above his head, his mind may wander off into devious paths of reverie, and the problem be utterly forgotten. Well, that is, at least, something for which to be grateful, for the paths of reverie are the paths of pleasantness and peace, and problems can usually afford to wait.
"Over a pipe!" Why the words bring up innumerable pleasant associations. The angler, having caught the coveted prize, refills his pipe, and with the satisfied sense of duty done, as the rings curl upward he reviews the struggle and glows again with victory. At the end of any day's occupation, especially one of pleasurable toil—whether it be shooting or hunting, or walking or what not—what can be pleasanter than to let the mind meander through the course of the day's proceedings over a pipe?

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

Addison, in the twenty-eighth Spectator, April 2, 1711, took note of the severance which had taken place between sign and trade, and of the absurdity that the sign no longer had any significance. After satirizing first, the monstrous conjunctions in signs of "Dog and Gridiron," "Cat and Fiddle" and so forth; and next the absurd custom by which young tradesmen, at their first starting in business, added their own signs to those of the masters under whom they had served their apprenticeship; the essayist goes on to say: "In the third place I would enjoin every shop to make use of a sign which bears some affinity to the wares in which it deals. What can be more inconsistent than to see ... a tailor at the Lion? A cook should not live at the Boot, nor a Shoe-maker at the Roasted Pig; and yet for want of this regulation, I have seen a Goat set up before the door of a perfumer, and the French King's Head at a sword-cutler's."

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