The tobacco-tongs were more properly called ember-or brand-tongs.  They sometimes had a tobacco-stopper riveted in near the axis of the tongs, and thus could be easily distinguished from other kinds of tongs.  An example in the Guildhall Museum, made of brass, and probably of late seventeenth-century date, has the end of one of the handles formed into a stopper.  In the same collection there are several pairs of ember-tongs with handles or jaws decorated.  In one or two a handle terminates in a hook, by which they could be hung up when not required for use.  In that delightful book of pictures and gossip concerning old household and farming gear, and old-fashioned domestic plenishings of many kinds, called “Old West Surrey,” Miss Jekyll figures two pairs of old ember-or brand-tongs.  One of these quite deserves the praise which she bestows upon it.  “Its lines,” says Miss Jekyll, “fill one with the satisfaction caused by a thing that is exactly right, and with admiration for the art and skill of a true artist.”  These homely tongs are fashioned with a fine eye for symmetry, and, indeed, for beauty of design and perfect fitness for the intended purpose.  The ends which were to pick up the coal are shaped like two little hands, while “the edges have slight mouldings and even a low bead enrichment.  The circular flat on the side away from the projecting stopper has two tiny engraved pictures; on one side of the joint a bottle and tall wine-glass, on the other a pair of long clay pipes crossed, and a bowl of tobacco shown in section.”  This beautiful little implement bears the engraved name of its Surrey maker, and the date 1795.

Country-folk nowadays often light their pipes in the old way, by picking up a live coal, or, in Ireland, a fragment of glowing peat, from the kitchen fire, with the ordinary tongs, and applying it to the pipe-bowl; but the old ember-tongs are seldom seen.  They may still be found in some farmhouses and country cottages, which have not been raided by the agents of dealers in antique furniture and implements, but examples are rare.  This is a digression, however, which has carried us far away from the early years of the seventeenth century.

It is pretty clear that not a few of the druggists who sold tobacco were great rascals.  Ben Jonson has let us into some of their secrets of adulteration—­the treatment of the leaf with oil and the lees of sack, the increase of its weight by other artificial additions to its moisture, washing it in muscadel and grains, keeping it in greased leather and oiled rags buried in gravel under ground, and by like devices.  Other writers speak of black spice, galanga, aqua vitae, Spanish wine, aniseeds and other things as being used for purposes of adulteration.

Trickery of another kind is revealed in a scene in Chapman’s play “A Humorous Day’s Mirth,” 1599.  A customer at an ordinary says:  “Hark you, my host, have you a pipe of good tobacco?” “The best in the town,” says mine host, after the manner of his class.  “Boy, dry a leaf.”  Quietly the boy tells him, “There’s none in the house, sir,” to which the worthy host replies sotto voce, “Dry a dock leaf.”  But the diner’s potations must have been powerful if they had left him unable to distinguish between the taste of tobacco and that of dried dock-leaf.