A due admixture of whites and blacks assemble together, and, damping the tobacco, extract all the large stems and fibres, which are then carefully laid aside ready for export to Europe, there to be cooked up for the noses of monarchs, old maids, and all others who aspire to the honour and glory of carrying a box—­not forgetting those who carry it in the waistcoat-pocket, and funnel it up the nose with a goose-quill.  How beautifully simple and unanswerable is the oft-told tale, of the reply of a testy old gentleman who hated snuff as much as a certain elderly person is said to hate holy-water—­when offered a pinch by an “extensive” young man with an elaborate gold-box.  “Sir,” said the indignant patriarch, “I never take the filthy stuff!  If the Almighty had intended my nostrils for a dust-pan, he would have turned them the other way.”—­But I wander from the subject.  We will leave the fibre to find its way to Europe and its noses, and follow the leaf to America and its mouths.  In another apartment niggers and whites re-pick the fibres out more carefully, and then roll up the pure loaf in a cylindrical shape, according to the measure provided for the purpose.  It is then taken to another apartment, and placed in duly prepared compartments under a strong screw-press, by which operation it is transformed from a loose cylinder to a well squashed parallelogram.  It is hard work, and the swarthy descendants of Ham look as if they were in a vapour-bath, and doubtless bedew the leaf with superfluous heat.

After the first pressing, it goes to a more artistic old negro, who, with two buckets of water—­one like pea-soup, the other as dark as if some of his children had been boiled down in it—­and armed with a sponge of most uninviting appearance, applies these liquids with most scientific touch, thereby managing to change the colour, and marble it, darken it, or lighten it, so as to suit the various tastes.  This operation completed, and perspiring negroes screwing down frantically, it is forced into the box prepared for its reception, which is imbedded in a strong iron-bound outer case during the process, to prevent the more fragile one from bursting under the pressure.  All this over, and the top fixed, a master-painter covers it with red and black paint, recording its virtues and its charms.  What a pity it could not lie in its snug bed for ever!  But, alas! fate and the transatlantic Anglo-Saxon have decreed otherwise.  Too short are its slumbers, too soon it bursts again, to suffer fresh pressure under the molars of the free and enlightened, and to fall in filthy showers over the length and breadth of the land, deluging every house and every vehicle to a degree that must be seen to be believed, and filling the stranger with much wonder, but far more disgust.  I really think it must be chewing tobacco which makes the Americans so much more restless, so much more like armadillos than any other nation.  It often has excited my wonder, how the more intelligent and civilized portion of the community, who do not generally indulge in the loathsome practice, can reconcile themselves to the annoyance of it as kindly as they do.  Habit and necessity are powerful masters.