obacco, suffers a more serious
abatement in the cheap pleasures of life than the dandy in his iron
boot, or the celibate on his iron cot. While for him who would fain
revel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing at which philanthropists
must weep, to see such an one, again and again, madly returning to the
cigar, which, for his incompetent stomach, he cannot enjoy, while still,
after each shameful repulse, the sweet dream of the impossible good
goads him on to his fierce misery once more--poor eunuch!"

"I agree with you," said the cosmopolitan, still gravely social, "but
you don't smoke."

"Presently, presently, do you smoke on. Ad I was saying about----"

"But _why_ don't you smoke--come. You don't think that tobacco, when in
league with wine, too much enhances the latter's vinous quality--in
short, with certain constitutions tends to impair self-possession, do
you?"

"To think that, were treason to good fellowship," was the warm
disclaimer. "No, no. But the fact is, there is an unpropitious flavor in
my mouth just now. Ate of a diabolical ragout at dinner, so I shan't
smoke till I have washed away the lingering memento of it with wine. But
smoke away, you, and pray, don't forget to drink. By-the-way, while we
sit here so companionably, giving loose to any companionable nothing,
your uncompanionable friend, Coonskins, is, by pure contrast, brought
to recollection. If he were but here now, he would see how much of real
heart-joy he denies himself by not hob-a-nobbing with his kind."

"Why," with loitering emphasis, slowly withdrawing his cigar, "I thought
I had undeceived you there. I thought you had come to a better
understanding of my eccentric friend."

"Well, I thought so, too; but first impressions will return, you know.
In truth, now that I think of it, I am led to conjecture from chance
things which dropped from Coonskins, during the little interview I had
with him, that he is not a Missourian by birth, but years ago came West
here, a young misanthrope from the other side of the Alleghanies, less
to make his fortune, than to flee man. Now, since they say trifles
sometimes effect great results, I shouldn't wonder, if his history were
probed, it would be found that what first indirectly gave his sad bias
to Coonskins was his disgust at reading in boyhood the advice of
Polonius to Laertes--advice which, in the selfishness it inculcates, is
almost on a par with a sort of ballad upon the economies of
money-maki