Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 12:

The chief legitimate objection to cigarette smoking was well stated some years ago by the late Dr. Andrew Wilson. "I think cigarettes are apt to prove injurious," he said, "because a man will smoke far too much when he indulges in this form of the weed, and because I think it is generally admitted that cigarettes are apt to produce evil effects out of all proportion to the amount of tobacco which is apparently consumed." Excess can equally be found among cigar and pipe-smokers. The late Chancellor Parish, in his "Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect," tells a delightful story of a Sussex rustic's holiday—"May be you knows Mass [Master, the distinctive title of a married labourer] Pilbeam? No! doänt ye? Well, he was a very sing'lar marn was Mass Pilbeam, a very sing'lar marn! He says to he's mistus one day, he says, 'tis a long time, says he, sence I've took a holiday—so cardenly, nex marnin' he laid abed till purty nigh seven o'clock, and then he brackfustes, and then he goos down to the shop and buys fower ounces of barca, and he sets hisself down on the maxon [manure heap], and there he set, and there he smoked and smoked and smoked all the whole day long, for, says he 'tis a long time sence I've had a holiday! Ah, he was a very sing'lar marn—a very sing'lar marn indeed."

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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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