The Anatomy of Tobacco
contradictory of a forbidding countenance a cheerful countenance, so rightly in such case should this man's countenance be cheerful; but yet it is not so, the reason whereof has not yet been discovered.
Next take the female sellers of tobacco, whose very existence I consider an insult to the smoker. For as it is not the habit of females in this country to smoke needs must be that such ones do sell that of which they know nothing and on which they are not qualified to discriminate. And this want of knowledge they endeavour to replace by idle verbosities and foolish grimaces wherewith to please the clothes-horses who may frequent their shop. Yet let it not be thought that they have any pretensions to a pleasant wit or pointed understanding, for I myself, being in company with one whose fault it was to have too great a fondness for these harpies, did list to a conversation lasting above an hour, in which I avow no one sensible, pleasant, or humorous word did pass, the talk being like unto ditchwater. And what pleasure he who
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