to old ladies, who use any kind, either black or yellow,
and who prefer themselves the cheaper kinds. But few varieties are
used, and there seems to be but little taste manifested in the
selection of the "dust." Foreign varieties are used only to a limited
extent, being chiefly confined to those of transatlantic birth and
tastes. The custom of chewing and smoking seems to be more popular
with the male sex than snuff-taking, and one rarely finds a man
addicted to the latter habit, unless it be one somewhat advanced in
years.

Stewart in his admirable paper on snuff gives much useful information
in regard to the universal custom of using it as well as its origin
and distinguished uses of the great sternutatory.

"The luckless fate of inventors and originators has become
proverbial, but the ingenious individual whose nostrils
rejoiced in the first pinch of snuff stood in no need of the
niggardly praise of contemporaries or the lavish gratitude
of posterity. That first 'pinch' was its own priceless
reward, far above present appreciation or future fame. What
matters it, that his great name has not been reverently
handed down to us: that posterity seeks in vain his honored
tomb, on which to hang her grateful votive wreath; that
zealous antiquaries have raised up innumerable pretenders to
his unclaimed honors, and striven to rob him of his fame?
Enough for that lucky inventor, wherever he may rest, that
he enjoyed in his lifetime the reward for which ordinary
benefactors of their kind are fain to look to the future.

"It is perfectly vain to attempt now to penetrate into the
mystery which envelopes the name and nation of the first
snuff-taker: long before rough, noble-hearted Drake cured
his dyspepsia by the use of tobacco, or Raleigh transplanted
some roots of that precious weed into English soil, there
were European noses which had rejoiced at its pulverized
leaves. Conjecture, lost in the mazy distance, gladly lays
hold of something substantial in the shape of snuff's first
royal patron. This was Catherine de Medicis, who, receiving
some seeds of the tobacco plant from a Dutch colony,
cherished them, and elevated the dried and pounded leaves
into a royal medicine, with the proud title of 'Herbe a la
Reine.' For in the beginning men took snuff, not as an
everyday luxury, but as a me