peace, or price of war?
Did the great Khalif in his "Houre of Pleasures,"
Wager and lose it to the good Zaafar?

It may have soothed mild Spenser's melancholy,
While musing o'er traditions of the past,
Or graced the lips of brave Sir Walter Raleigh,
Ere sage King Jamie blew his "Counterblast."

Did it, safe hidden in some secret cavern,
Escape that monarch's pipoclastic ken?
Has Shakespeare smoked it at the Mermaid Tavern,
Quaffing a cup of sack with rare old Ben?

Ay, Shakespeare might have watched his vast creation
Loom through its smoke--the spectre-haunted Thane,
The Sisters at their ghostly invocations,
The jealous Moor and melancholy Dane.

Round its orbed haze and through its mazy ringlets,
Titania may have led her elfin rout,
Or Ariel fanned it with his gauzy winglets,
Or Puck danced in the bowl to put it out.

Vain are all fancies--questions bring no answer;
The smokers vanish, but the pipe remains;
He were indeed a subtle necromancer,
Could read their records in its cloudy stains.

Nor this alone: its destiny may doom it
To outlive e'en its use and history--
Some ploughman of the future may exhume it
From soil now deep beneath the eastern sea.

And, treasured by some antiquarian Stultus,
It may to gaping visitors be shown,
Labelled: "The symbol of some ancient Cultus,
Conjecturally Phallic, but unknown."

Why do I thus recall the ancient quarrel
'Twixt Man and Time, that marks all earthly things?
Why labor to re-word the hackneyed moral,
[Greek: Os phhyllongenehe], as Homer sings?

For this: Some links we forge are never broken:
Some feelings claim exemption from decay;
And Love, of which this pipe was but the token,
Shall last, though pipes and smokers pass away."

The verse that has been written in praise as well as dispraise of the
"Indian Novelty" would of itself fill a volume of no "mean
pretentions." The following clever lines from The Tobacco Plant
entitled "Puffs from a Pipe," convey much advice to all smokers of
tobacco.

Sage old friend! with judgment ripe;
Come and join me in a pipe.

Brother student! brother joker,
Thee I greet, O! brother smoker.

Smoke, O! men of every station,
Every climate, every nation.

East and West, and South and North,
Recognize Tobacco's worth.

Red man! let