p. 309 | THE USE OF TOBACCO

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1880

THE USE OF TOBACCO.

It is rather singular that Americans are the only civilized people who habitually chew tobacco, although sailors of nearly every nation are addicted to its mastication. It is singular, too, that we, probably, employ tobacco in other ways less than other countries. Snuffing is rather rare here, common as it is in Europe, especially on the continent. We do not smoke any more, if as much as, the English; and the French, Italian, notably the Germans, Dutch and Spanish exceed us in smoking. But as tobacco-eaters we occupy the field alone, having, it is to be regretted, a monopoly of one of the most obnoxious of practices. The national mastication and expectoration are known over the world, and do ample service in all conceptions and caricatures of Brother Jonathan. To see a landsman chewing tobacco anywhere abroad is to know him for an American, native or adopted. Perhaps we stick to the worst of the three customs because tobacco is to so large extent an American plant. Europe knew nothing of it until the discovery by Columbus of the Western world. The sailors he sent ashore at Cuba found the natives smoking, and, seeing them emit smoke from their nostrils, imagined them to be on fire. All the natives from the northwest coast of Patagonia used tobacco, and to chew it is one of our inalienable and aboriginal rights.