in the enjoyment; this was to receive it not through a pinch between the fingers, but through a quill or little bone ladle, which forced it up the nose.  But, besides smoking and snuffing, I have a reminiscence of a third use of tobacco, which I apprehend is now quite obsolete.  Some of my readers will be surprised when I name this forgotten luxury.  It was called plugging, and consisted (horresco referens) in poking a piece of pigtail tobacco right into the nostril.  I remember this distinctly; and now, at a distance of more than sixty years, I recall my utter astonishment as a boy, at seeing my grand-uncle, with whom I lived in early days, put a thin piece of tobacco fairly up his nose.  I suppose the plug acted as a continued stimulant on the olfactory nerve, and was, in short, like taking a perpetual pinch of snuff.

The inveterate snuff-taker, like the dram-drinker, felt severely the being deprived of his accustomed stimulant, as in the following instance:—­A severe snow-storm in the Highlands, which lasted for several weeks, having stopped all communication betwixt neighbouring hamlets, the snuff-boxes were soon reduced to their last pinch.  Borrowing and begging from all the neighbours within reach were first resorted to, but when these failed, all were alike reduced to the longing which unwillingly-abstinent snuff-takers alone know.  The minister of the parish was amongst the unhappy number; the craving was so intense that study was out of the question, and he became quite restless.  As a last resort the beadle was despatched, through the snow, to a neighbouring glen, in the hope of getting a supply; but he came back as unsuccessful as he went.  “What’s to be dune, John?” was the minister’s pathetic inquiry.  John shook his head, as much as to say that he could not tell; but immediately thereafter started up, as if a new idea had occurred to him.  He came back in a few minutes, crying, “Hae!” The minister, too eager to be scrutinising, took a long, deep pinch, and then said, “Whaur did you get it?” “I soupit[41] the poupit,” was John’s expressive reply.  The minister’s accumulated superfluous Sabbath snuff now came into good use.

It does not appear that at this time a similar excess in eating accompanied this prevalent tendency to excess in drinking.  Scottish tables were at that period plain and abundant, but epicurism or gluttony do not seem to have been handmaids to drunkenness.  A humorous anecdote, however, of a full-eating laird, may well accompany those which appertain to the drinking lairds.—­A lady in the north having watched the proceedings of a guest, who ate long and largely, she ordered the servant to take away, as he had at last laid down his knife and fork.  To her surprise, however, he resumed his work, and she apologised to him, saying, “I thought, Mr. ——­, you had done.”

“Oh, so I had, mem; but I just fan’ a doo in the redd o’ my plate.”  He had discovered a pigeon lurking amongst the bones and refuse of his plate, and could not resist finishing it.