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Show OLD CUSTOM iS COKING BACK Fashionable Englishmen Are Carrying Snuff-boxes Now and Dip Into Them. The old family doctor in the '60s, who had been in London and seen Sir Benjamin Brodie, used to tell stories about his distinguished colleague and point them by taking snuff. When he entered the. bedroom of a patient his beard and clothes were redolent ot snuff; he would brush it off his flowered flow-ered waistcoat. We now read of a return re-turn to snuiflng in England ; that a snuff club has been established in Leeds; that motoring favors the practice prac-tice because the motorist cannot in the open enjoy a cigar. We also read, Philip Hale writes In the Boston Herald, that snuff is bad for the nerves, and that the modern "brands deteriorate quickly; that snull is also bad for the digestion and for the nose, since it is sometimes adulterated adul-terated with lime. George IV.'s snull was sold for 400, and how long did the fragrance of it last? In many ways this taking of snull was a fine, courtly old habit. It accentuated ac-centuated an epigram; it served as an answer when speech failed; it gave weighty importance to a trilling ob- servation. James I. did not inveigh again3t it in his "Counterblast to Tobacco." To-bacco." What more royal present to an actor or violinist than a gold snuiT box incrusted with diamonds and tilled with ducats or louis d'or? Then there were the snuffboxes with lids exquisitely ex-quisitely painted, with the portrait of some frail beauty, or inscribed with a ribald motto! If the practice is revived, should the pinch be taken with the left hand or the right? Some one objected to Richard Mansfield's Beau Brummel because the comedian took snuff with the right. |