and abuse, the
other the refinement of the practice. While Don Espanol, with his
fragrant _puro_, or straw or paper covered cigarrito, smoketh cleanly,
spitteth not, uses his tobacco, as he uses most things, like a
gentleman; the _werther Deutscher_ takes his huge pipe, rarely cleaned
and with the essence of tobacco oozing from every joint, and filling it
from a bag, or rather sack, of coarse and vile-smelling tobacco, puffs
forth volumes of smoke, expectorating _ad nauseam_ at intervals of a
minute or less. No considerations of place or person hinder him from
indulging in his favourite pastime. In steam-boats, in diligences, in
the public walks and promenades, into the dining-rooms of hotels, every
where does the pipe intrude itself; carried as habitually as a
walking-cane; and even when not in actual use, emitting the most evil
odour from the bowl and tube, saturated as they are with tobacco juice.

However unpleasant all this may be to foreigners, especially to English
ladies accustomed to the more cleanly habits of their own countrymen,
the German dames are perfectly reconciled to it. Had we to draw a
picture of domestic felicity on the Rhine, we would sketch it thus:--a
summer evening--a flower garden--a table with tea or coffee--a dozen
chairs occupied by persons of both sexes--the women big-feeted,
blue-eyed, placid creatures, knitting stockings--the men heavy and
awkward, each with a monstrous signet-ring on the dirty forefinger of
his right hand, smoking unceasingly, and puffing the vapour into the
faces of their better halves, who heed it not, and occasionally may even
be seen replenishing with their own delicate digits the enormous
porcelain or meerschaum bowls of the pipes. If you doubt the accuracy of
our description, reader, go and judge for yourself. The distance is
short, and summer is at hand. Put yourself on board a steamboat, whisk
over to Ostend or Antwerp, and thence rail and rattle it down to the
Rhine. You shall not be three days on German soil without encountering a
score such groups as the one we have just sketched.

THE MONSTER-MISERY OF LITERATURE.

BY A MOUSE BORN OF THE MOUNTAIN.

Be under no apprehension, gentle public, that you are about to be kept
in suspense touching the moral of our argumentation, as too often in the
pamphlets addressed in Johnsonian English to Thompsonian understandings,
wherein a pennyworth of matter is set forth by a monstrous quantity of
phrase. We mean