For as sure as you carry about with you a snuff-box, of copper, of
tortoise-shell, or of horn (the material matters absolutely nothing), you
cannot fail to have met upon your path the man who carries no snuff-box,
and yet is continually taking snuff.

The man who carries no snuff-box is an intimate nuisance--a hand-in-hand
annoyance--a sort of authorised Jeremy Diddler to all snuff-takers.

He meets you everywhere. The first question he puts is not how "you do?"
he assails you instantly with "Have you such a thing as a pinch of snuff
about you?"

It is absolutely as if he said, "I have no snuff myself, but I know _you_
have--and you cannot refuse me levying a small contribution upon it."

If it were only _one_ pinch; but it is two--it is four--it is eight; it is
all the week--all the month--it is all year round. The man who carries no
snuff box is a regular Captain Macheath--a licensed Paul Clifford--to
everyone that does. He meets you on the highway, and summonses you to stop
by demanding "Your snuff-box or your life?"

A man can easily refuse to his most intimate friend his purse, or his
razor, or his wife, or his horse; but with what decency can he refuse
him--or to his coolest acquaintance even--a pinch of snuff? It is in this
that the evil _pinches_.

The snuff-taker who carries no snuff-box is aware of this--and woe to the
box into which his fingers gain admission to levy the pinch his nose
distrains upon.