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FRANK LESLIE'S NEW. YORK JOURNAL.
11k
scalding water, and , being swaddled up anew afd
led into the outer apartment, the air of which strikes
upon hirn as that of an ice-house, he sinks exhaust-
ed’ beside the consoling pipe and coffee which ‘have
been prepared for him. “Never is sleep more grate-
ful than that which follows, though I am bound to
confess, for my own’ part, that I could ‘not’ help
dreaming fitfully of the vulture who had been claw-
ing me, and at last I woke,’ in imminent apprehen-
sion of him, and found the barber. ° oe
The Eastern barber is a distinguished personage.
He has been so under all rabid despotisms. | It was
found inconvenient not to treat with ‘considerable
deference an individual who also enjoyed a sort of
absolute despotism—who, in’ point of fact, was a
rival potentate in his way, and might doom you to
execution if ever the idea should occur to’ him as
being agreeable or advantageous. It is not surpri-
sing that barbers invested with so much dignity,
should have a lively consciousness of their exalted
statiun in society. It is indeed a natural sentiment,
and common to all magnates alike.’ «I notice, there-
fore, without surprise, that ‘the shaver’ now intro-
duced to’ me. has a dignified charm of manner and
grace of attitude while taking the small hair out of
my nose, and the gray hairs out of my eyebrows,
which almost causes’ me to forget the excruciating
anguish arising from so unlooked-for a p ding
He polishes me up indeed to such a powerful and
surprising extent, that I do not know my own face
in the pretty little tortoise-shell and mosaic-framed
looking-glass which he hands me, that I may admire
in it the perfection of his art. He has shaved me
with such a light hand that I set that individual
down as a goose who shaveth himself in Turkey.
My chin is as stnooth as a very dark species of ivo-
ry; my eyebrows have been miraculously arched.
T feel for the favorite tuft on my right ear in vain.
My visage, and all thereto pertaining, is as bare as
the palm of a lady’s hand. I have grown quite juve-
nile during this strange operation. I came hither a
rusty elderly gentleman as needs to be. I shall de-
part an adventurous youth on my travels, and hotel
keepers will rejoice to take me in, I vow an
clare, that my moustaches are twisted into points
sharp and dark and insinuating enough, to go
straight through the heart of sweet seventeen.” The
barber contemplates the improvement in my person-
al appearance with due gravity and enjoyment.
am the last triumph of his art, and he is proud of
me. If it were not fora slight twinge of a most
intrusive and unaccountable rheumatism, I should
be proud of myself. .
The barber veils his eyes with his hands, and pros-
trates himself before the Beys Ade. I notice with
a kindred pang that Hamlet is distressed at the
®
depth of his reverence, and I prophesy that my store |
of Turkish small change in the Albanian pouch will
sensibly shrink ere that barber departeth. ~
Let us dress and depart also. Hamed brings my
linen, which has been washed at the bath during my
ablutions, and holds a curtain before me as a screen
from the vulgar, while I put it on. He is always
very particular in this respect, and he will not allow
me to be seen by profane eyes in my shirt-sleeves
on my account. I must be arrayed in the full glory
of a gay-colored plaid shooting coat (bought of a
Maltese Jew), and I must have on my eyeglass before
he will let me go forth. His fierce rugged face and
well-knit figure, the splendor of his Albanian dress
and his glittering arms, contrast, as they often do,
oddly enough, with the employment he has imposed
on himself. of ef Jo! te
And now comes the quarter of an hour so pathe-
tically mentioned by old Rabelais. I must pay for
the loss of my skin and my renovated youth. .Un-
happily for my slender purse, which has long been
in a galloping consumption, people in Turkey di
not pay what things are worth, but what they them-
selves are supposed to be worth. Now they appear
to find it convenient wherever I_ owe ‘anything to
call'me Beys Adé, which signifies great lord, or
something altogether out of the common way ; and
therefore I am. ruthlessly mulcted of a sum. rather
greater than that I should have, viz , about two and
a-half: dollars—a powerful sum for the bath. . If
my servant had not biown my trumpet with such
haughtiness and vitacity while entertaining his little
world of admirers in the ante-room, | might have
got off for four cents as other people do. - Ah, Ha-
med! Hamed! °°) fo : Se
May’s nature runs either to herbs or weeds} let
him seasonably wat: the one, and destroy the other.
A Panisian robber, who was seized tor stealing
snuff out of a tobacconist’s shop, by way of excusing
himself, exclaimed, « ‘That he never heard of that
law which forbade a man to take snuff) ~
The Philosophy of a Sneeze.
Reaper—have you ever sneezed! ' Not a paltry,
half-stifled ‘*t’shaw !’’ but an unmistakeable involun-
tary outburst, which it was impossible to restrain,
which shvok the apartment wherein it occurred,
startled everybody within hearing, and Jeft you! for
a few’ seconds seemingly ‘doubting whether your
head remained in its right place or not! Such is
what I call a sneeze—and, strange though it may
seem, I am about to endeavor to eke a little philo-
sophy out of it. If the falling of an apple led New-
ton to the discovery of the laws of gravitation, may
not the contempiativn of the peculiar phenomena
constituting a sneeze lead to the discovery of some
great truth, the practical application of which shall
add to the proper enjoyment of life?
The nose is the member principally concerned in
the inquiry—What causes a sneeze? This member
is prominent enough—always conspicuous, but little
appreciated.’ Like most “ forward” beings, it seems
trealed with contempt. It has served the caricatur-
ist more than the philosopher. The eye has been
universally admired: its phisiology has been taught
in schools and lecture-rooms- -poets have sung its
praises; the ear, and ‘the organs of veice, have
proved the themes of many musings—but the poor
~2se, more sinned against than sinning, has met
with parative neglect, Shaksp lescribes
Bardolph’s nose as “a ball of wild-fire!’ and: Ran-
dolph, an old poct, speaks of the nose “spoiling the
beauteous face!” if ever complimented, it is in the
ironical strain of the song— me
“Nose, nose, jolly red nose.”
And it has been considered a very suitable way to
avenge an offence by pulling the poor nose, although
the latter had but little to do with the act which
excited to anger. In this way the poor unfortunate
organ has been abandoned to the management of
the ignorant and sensual, who have not failed to
heap upon it unmerited oppression.
Many things will excite sneezing—but tobacco
possesses in an extraordinary degree the power to
produce this strange effect.. A single grain of the
dust of tobacco applied to the healthy nostril will
excite one of those uncontrollable explosions which
I have already called your attention to. You may
be quite calm and comfortable, even dropping away
into a dreamy “ snooze ’—say on a summer after-
noon—and if any one wickedly cast but a grain of
snuff up thy nostril, thy dreams are at an end, and
the pleasant composure just spreading calmly over
thy face is rufiled at once into an indescrible grim-
ness of visage. Strange that so trifling a cause
should produce so startling and decided an effect.
Yet so it is—and everybody knows it. Now the
philosophy which I gather herefrom is this—chat
tobacco is repugnant to the organs of smell, injurious
to life, and should be altogether dispensed with.
What is a sneeze? It never occurs in health, ex-
cept excited by some foreign agent, irritating the
membranes of the nasal passages, upon which the
nervous filaments are distributed. In cases of cold,
or what is termed influenza, these are unduly ex-
citable, and hence the repeated sneezings which
then occur.. The nose receives three sets of nerves
—the nerves of smell, those of feeling, and those of
motion. The former communicate to the brain the
odorous properties of substances with which they
may come in contact, in a diffused or concentrated
state; the second communicate the impressions of
touch; the third move the muscles of the nose, but
the power of: these muscles is very limited. When
a sneeze occurs, all these faculties are excited ina
high degree. * A grain of snusf excites the olfactory
nerves, which despatch to the brain the intelligence
that “snuff has attacked the nostril!” ©The brain
instantly sends a mandate through the motor nerves
to the muscles, saying—* Cast it out!” .And the
result is unmistakeable! So offensive is the enemy
besieging the nostri! held to be, that the nose is not
left to its own defence.:-It were too feeble to ac-
complish this, An‘ allied army of muscles join 'in
the rescue—nearly one-half of the body arouses
against the intruder—from the muscles 0. the lips
to those of the abdomen, all unite in the effort for
the expulsion of the grain of snuff!
t us consider what occurs in this instantaneous
operation. The lungs become fully inflated, the ab-
dominal organs are pressed downward, the ribs rise
and extend forward, the lips firmly close, and the
veil of the palate drops down to form a barrier to
the escape of air through the mouth—and now, all
the muscles which. have relaxed for the purpose,
contract simultaneously, and force the compressed
air from the lungs in a torrent out through the nasal
passages, with the benevolent determination tu
sweep away the particle of snuff which has been
plicated action of a sneeze; and if the first effort
does not succeed, then follows a second, a third, and
a fourth ; the eyes all the while weeping on account
of the general strife ; and not until victory is achiev-
ed, do the army of defenders dissolve their compact,
and settle down to the enjoyment of peace and
quietude.’: *! > :
Surely, then, the contemplation of a sneeze
teaches ‘us something. * ‘ :
In the year 1845 there were imported into Great
Britain considerably more than thirty-five millions
of pounds of tobacco—the gross amount of duty re-
ceived thereon was over four millions two hundred
and twenty-three thousand pounds, or about five shil-
lings per head for every man, woman, ‘and child in
Great Britain; and the philosophy ofa sneeze tells
us that a large proportion of this immense sum may
be much better employed than in ‘arousing the de-
fensive powers of nature, and when these are ex-
hausted giving free inroad to disease, impairing the
sense of smell, creating habits which are at once :
uncleanly, unhealthy, and expensive, and producing «
a morbid appetite, from which its victim can never
obtain rest. tee :
Out of the 35,053,516 Ibs. of tobacco imported,
nearly 32,000,000 lbs. were the produce of American
slave labor; and thus two systenis of slavery, widely
different in their characters, find support in the use
of tobacco: the self-imposed slavery of the British
smoker and snuff-taker, and the slavery of the negro
bondsman.
That- disease and premature death occur as the
result of these habits, the history of medicine
abundantly proves; and none but those who are
utterly ignorant of the physiology of health can
doubt the assertion. ~~ __
—
Dearn A roaD.—The more one sees of the
world, the mure one . becomes convinced that one’s
existence and welfare is of far more importance to
oneself than to any other person, and the feeling of
selfishness thereby engendered does not improve
our nature. We are often shocked to find how soon
we are reconciled to the loss, or to the misfortunes
of our friends ; and we cannot expect that they will
bewail our individual sufferings to any greater ex-
tent. In India, where deaths are so sudden, you
sup with a man one night, attend his funeral the
next morning, and probably dine with some of his
most intimate friends that evening, after attending
the sale of his effects, this feeling of selfishness in-
creases more thanin Europe. A friend of mine in
India told me that his death from cholera had been
reported and credited, and on the evening of the
day on which the report reached the Presidency, he
walked into the billiard-room of the club, and he
said that his eyes were never more completely
opened to the actual value and duration of friend-
ship, and of the utter unimportance of any indivi-
dual life to the general routine and amusement o:
society, than by finding his most intimate and affec-
tionate friends playing, and smoking, and chafling
away as usual, having, in a very few hours, got
over the shock, and reconciled themselves complete-
ly to his sudden loss. Of course, they were very
happy to see him, and shook him by the hand, with
“By Jove, old fellow, I thought you were dead,”
&c., &c. But an occurrence of that nature could
not fail to prove toa man of the most moderate dis-
crimination, that his existence was of remarkably
little consequence, even in-his own small world.
The difference between sickness and death in the
East and in; Europe is this: in India,.as I have
said, the last details are hurried over as quickly as
possible ; the blow is so sudden, the shaft from the
quiver of the “rider on the white horse ” dealt with
so unerring an aim, that the shock is past almost
before one is aware the blow has been struck ; and
when you see the man standing at your elbow
struck down, your first feeling is one of selfish con-
gratulation at having escaped a similar fate. , In
England, it is different ;. there you see your friends’
sinking gradually, but surely, to their. end; you
may meet one apparently in the full enjoyment of
health, bat you know that the hand of death has set
his seal, and that he will as assuredly claim that
fair form within a‘certain number of weeks or
months, as that night will succeed the day, The
former may be compared to a gust of wind suddenly
extinguishing the lamp that is in your hand; the
latter, to a lamp which can last but a certain time,
its light and’ brilliancy sink lower and lower, and
become more feeble with every breath, and you
watch the uncertain return of its, flickerings
with the painful, oppressive conviction, that each
one may be the last. : : .
causing irmitation therein. ; Such, then, is the com,
Peace is the evening star of the soul, as. virtue is
its sun, and the two are never far apart. Lo
