Excerpt from Tobacco Manual

Sixty - five years ago I hoed corn by the side of an old man who was very lame. He would make his way to the field with a staff in one hand, using the handle of his hoe for a second staff in the other. His staff he would leave at the edge of the field and having hoed one hill he would lean on his hoe and hobble to the next, and thus he would do from morn till night.

Why I used to love to hoe with this old man was that he was a great story-teller. His narratives of the encounters of the early settlers of New England with the Indians thrilled my whole soul, and perhaps gave me a bias against the red skins, that it was hard for maturer years entirely to over come. Not a forenoon nor afternoon passed without the recital of some white child stolen, some Indian barbarity, or some marvelous escape.

The old gentleman, though seldom without tobacco in his mouth, consumed comparatively little. He chewed it over and over, and if the strength of it was too much exhausted he would add just a little fresh from the plug to it and hoe another bout. When a hill was a little weedier than common the tobacco felt the power of the grinders upon it as well as the weeds the power of the hoe.

My companion (for I felt him to be such) would some times pass me the tobacco, after he himself had taken some, which, I am sorry to say, I did not always refuse. I especially remember that it was so once. Not long did I hold the accepted quid in my mouth till lips, gums, palate, and the whole mucus membrane even to the fauces felt awfully. I put the tobacco from my mouth and tried to get relief by spitting, but the spittle soon became only a white froth to spit which I called spitting cotton. I went to the water jug and rinsed my mouth but to little purpose. Hours elapsed before the secretions took on their normal and wonted action. My personal experience in the use of tobacco began and ended on the day that I hoed corn by the side of Joseph Blood.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.