ITS HISTORY & ASSOCIATIONS.

INCLUDING

AN ACCOUNT OF THE PLANT AND ITS MANUFACTURE;
WITH ITS MODES OF USE IN ALL

783-12 FRJ.

ΤΟ

CHARLES ROACH SMITH, Esq.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

It was a custom with the old English authors to dedicate their works to persons for whom they felt esteem; and to make such dedications serve as familiar prefaces. I desire, in this instance, to revive the practice; and I inscribe your name on this page.

You, who know my early history, will feel no surprise at my choice of subject. Born in London, and never having been out of sight of St. Paul's until I had reached my twenty-second year, the tobacco-warehouse, where my father worked, became my play-ground; and my first remembrances are, of rolling in the tobacco-leaf, as country children would roll in a hay-field, and playing at "hide-and-seek" in the empty barrels. In after years, when I helped my father to manufacture many hundred pounds of tobacco-leaf, I little thought that my pen and pencil would be called into use. over a book like this. I am willing to think, however, tha the peculiarities of my early training have here been of use.

Disliking my father's trade, and, through many difficulties, happily emancipating myself, tobacco had not that charm.

for me that you and others find in it. But I hope these pages will show that I have no narrow notions on a pleasure, in which I cannot participate; but rather a honest detestation of that want of Christian tolerance which has induced some persons to denounce a harmless indulgence as if it were a moral evil. I should be untrue to my father's memory"an honest man and a good smoker"—if I did not contradict such gratuitous imputations. If I am proud of anything, it is of my father and his seventy-two years of industry and integrity.

That you are "a good smoker" also, I have had experience, at home and abroad, when I have examined in your society many of the finest relics of antiquity, the study of which has been the solace of our lives. In you I shall find a gentle critic you will estimate, by your own experience, that which few who read consider, the time and trouble requisite to gather into one volume the results of reading many a score; and I have been embarrassed in my task of condensation by the abundance rather than the paucity of my materials.

I will not offer you any laudation here; friendship is too sacred a thing for public display. I only wish that, while one copy of this little book remains, it should exist to record the sincere esteem I feel for you.

F. W. FAIRHOLT.