him, and with ready hand unlocks the doors of dreary cellars or towering and chilly edifices; mind hath not yet promulgated or received the noble doctrine that toil is dignity; and you, yes, even you, dear, gentle hearts! would feel the artizan a slave, if some clever limner showed you the toiling wretch sooted or japanned.  Would you then rob him of one means of happiness?  No—­not even of his pipe!  Ladies, you tread on carpets or on marble floors—­I will tell you where my foot has been.  I have walked where the air was circumscribed—­where man was manacled by space, for no other crimes but those of poverty and misfortune.  I’ve seen the broken merchant seated round a hearth that had not one endearment—­they looked about for faces that were wont to smile upon them, and they saw but mirrors of their own sad lineaments—­some laughed in mockery of their sorrows, as though they thought that mirth would come for asking; others, grown brutal by being caged, made up in noise what they lacked in peace.  How comfortless they seemed!  The only solace that the eye could trace was the odious herb, tobacco!

I have climbed the dark and narrow stairway that led to a modern Helicon; there I have seen the gentle creature that loved nature for her beauty—­beauty that was to him apparent, although he sat hemmed in by bare and tattered walls; yet there he had seen bright fountains sparkle and the earth robe herself with life, and where the cunning spider spread her filmy toils above his head, he has seen a world of light, a galaxy of wonders.  The din of wheels and the harsh discordant cries of busy life have died within his ear, and the tiny voices of choral birds have hymned him into peace; or the lettered eloquence of dread sages has become sound again, and he has communed in the grove and temple, as they of older time did in the eternal cities, with those whose names are immortal—­and there I have seen the humble pipe! the sole evidence of luxury or enjoyment; when his daily task was suspended, it can never end, for he must weave and weave the fibres of his brain into the clue that leads him to the means of sustaining life.

I have wandered through lanes and fields when the autumn was on and the world golden, and my journey has ended at a yeoman’s door.  My welcome has been a hand-grasp, that needed bones and muscles to bear it unflinchingly—­my fare the homeliest, but the sweetest; and when the meal was ended, how has the night wore on and then away over a cup of brown October—­the last autumn’s legacy—­and, forgive me, Emmeline, a pipe of tobacco!  Glorious herb! that hath oft-times stayed the progress of sorrow and contagion; a king once consigned thee to the devil, but many a humble, honest heart hath hailed thee as a blessing from the Creator.

I was introduced by my new acquaintance without much ceremony, and was pleased to see that little was expected.  “We meet here thrice a week,” said Bonus, “just to wile away an hour or two after the worry and fatigue of business.  Most of us have been acquainted with each other since boyhood—­and we have some curious characters amongst us; and should you wish to enrol your name, you have only to prove your qualification for this (holding up his pipe), and we shall be happy to recognise you as a ‘Puff.’”