into subjection and assimilation, there is no power of speculation left
in the top storeys. You sink brutishly into an armchair, warm your legs
at the fire, and let the leucocytes and phagocytes fight it out. At such
times smoking becomes purely mechanical. You imbibe and exhale the fumes
automatically. The choicest aromatic blends are mere fuel. Your eyes
see, but your brain responds not. The vital juices, generous currents,
or whatever they are that animate the intelligence, are down below
hatches fighting furiously to annex and drill into submission the alien
and distracting mass of food that you have taken on board. They are like
stevedores, stowing the cargo for portability. A little later, however,
when this excellent work is accomplished, the bosun may trill his
whistle, and the deck hands can be summoned back to the navigating
bridge. The mind casts off its corporeal hawsers and puts out to sea.
You begin once more to live as a rational composition of reason,
emotion, and will. The heavy dinner postpones and stultifies this
desirable state. Let it then be said that light dining is best: a little
fish or cutlets, white wine, macaroni and cheese, ice cream and coffee.
Such a régime restores the animal health, and puts you in vein for a
continuance of intellect.

Smoking is properly an intellectual exercise. It calls forth the
choicest qualities of mind and soul. It can only be properly conducted
by a being in full possession of the five wits. For those who are in
pain, sorrow, or grievous perplexity it operates as a sovereign
consoler, a balm and balsam to the harassed spirit; it calms the
fretful, makes jovial the peevish. Better than any ginseng in the
herbal, does it combat fatigue and old age. Well did Stevenson exhort
virgins not to marry men who do not smoke.

Now we approach the crux and pinnacle of this inquirendo into the art