or
replies to such questions as, when is a door not a door? and why does a
chicken cross the road? They are miserable creatures whom I will not
further mention.

"The usage of tobacco, or some smokable substitute, is as old as
primitive man. Almost all nations of the earth are adepts in this
particular habit. It is, of course, an acquired taste, as also are
washing and tomatoes. We are born with appetites which are static and
unchangeable, but we are also born with a yearning for pleasure which
is almost as positive as an appetite and only needs cultivation to
become equally imperative. Doubtless, a traveller from some distant
planet, who knew nothing of tobacco, would be astonished at the
spectacle of a man exhaling smoke from his lips with splendid
unconcern, and our traveller's conjectures as to the origin of the
smoke and the immunity of the smoker would be highly amusing and
instructive.

"I am often surprised on reflecting that our immediate ancestors were
debarred from this pleasant indulgence, and I have wondered how they
made the evenings pass. The lack of tobacco and pockets in their
clothes (both of which are great civilising agents) may have been
responsible for the wars, harryings, kidnappings and cattle raids
which, alternating with rigorous and austere religious ceremonial,
formed the bulk of their pleasures. Nowadays we leave these violent
entertainments to children and the semi-literate and take our pleasures
more composedly. A man who can put his hands in his pockets will
seldom remove them for the purpose of slaying some one whose only fault
is that he was born in the County Sligo. A man with a pipe in his
teeth will be too much at peace with society to endanger its existence.

"If the blessings of tobacco should be extended to the remainder of the
vertebrates (as, why should it not?) I am sure that lions, elephants,
and wild boars would avail themselves of it. So, also, would
kangaroos, a beautiful and agile race living in Polynesia, or
thereabouts--they are beautiful hoppers, and collect large quantities
of this plant. In this direction they are especially well equipped,
each having a pouch in her stomach in which to carry tobacco and hops,
but wherein they now ignorantly secrete their young. Serpents would
smoke a pipe with considerable elegance, and might become more
benevolent in consequence. Frogs would smoke, but I fancy they would
expectorate too elaborately to be neighbourly. Fish, howeve