The Russians, doubtless, have a natural appetite for tobacco, in common with all races of mankind, whether Digger Indians, Caffirs, Hindoos, Persians, Turks, Americans, or Dutchmen; for I never yet have met with a people who did not take to the glorious weed, in some shape or other, as naturally as a babe to its mother’s breast. Vodka, or native brandy, is their favorite beverage, when they can get it. In that respect, too, they share a very common attribute of humanity—a passion for strong drinks. Nevertheless, although the love of intoxicating liquors is pretty general in Russia, the habit of smoking which usually accompanies it is not so common as in the more southern parts of Europe. A reason for this may be found in the prohibitions established by the government against the general use of tobacco. It is true, any person who pleases may enjoy this luxury, but by a rigid ukase of the emperor the restrictions amount very nearly to an absolute prohibition, so far as the common people are concerned. Smoking is prohibited in the streets of every town and city throughout the empire, and any infraction of the law in this respect, whether by a native or foreigner, is visited by a heavy penalty. I hear of several instances in St. Petersburg and Moscow of arrests by the police for violations of the imperial decree. The reason given by the Russians themselves for this despotic regulation is, that the cities being built mostly of wood, extensive and disastrous conflagrations have arisen from carelessness in street-smoking. It is difficult to see how the risk is lessened in this way, for the prohibition does not extend to smoking within doors. A carpenter may indulge his propensity for cigars over a pile of shavings, provided it be in his workshop, but he must not carry a lighted cigar in his mouth on any of the public thoroughfares. The true reason perhaps is, that the emperor considers it a useless and expensive habit, and thus makes use of his imperial power to discountenance it, as far as practicable, among his subjects. They may drink vodka if they please, because that only burns their insides out; but they must not smoke cigars, as a general rule, because that impairs their moral perceptions. Hence cigars are not permitted to be sold at any of the tobacco-shops in packages of less than ten. Few of the lower classes ever save up money enough to buy ten cigars at a time, so that if they desire to smoke they must go to a cheap groggery and indulge in cheap cigaritos. Owing to the want of opportunity, therefore, smoking is not a national characteristic, as in Germany and the United States.

This, I must confess, gave me a rather gloomy impression of Russia, and accounted in some measure for the grave and uncongenial aspect of the people. One always likes to find some bond of sympathy between himself and the inhabitants of the country through which he travels. I remember reading somewhere of a Scotchman who had occasion to visit the United States on business connected with an establishment in Glasgow. He was disgusted with the manners and customs of the people; had no faith in their capacity for business; found nothing to approve; considered them vulgar, impertinent, irresponsible, and irreligious; and finally was about to take his departure with these unfavorable views, when he discovered, from some practical experience, that they possessed, in addition to all these traits, wonderful shrewdness in the art of swindling. New dodges that he had never dreamt of turned up in the line of debits and credits; he was interested—delighted! A familiar chord was touched. He retracted all he had said; formed the most exalted opinion of the people; reluctantly returned to Glasgow, and there made a fortune in the course of a few years! It is said that he now swears by the eternal Yankee nation—the only oath he was ever known to make use of—and expresses a desire to settle in the United States, if he can find a suitable part of the country abounding in fogs, rain, sleet, snow, and wind.

Somewhat akin to this is the affection with which a traveler in a foreign land regards every mountain, tree, or flower that reminds him of his own country. The most pleasant parts of my experiences of mountain scenery are those that most resemble similar experiences at home. Some suggestion or hint of a familiar scene has often caused me to enjoy what would otherwise perhaps have attracted no particular attention. I remember once, while traveling in Brazil, near the Falls of Tejuca, some very pleasant scenes of early life came suddenly to mind, without any thing that I could perceive at the moment to give rise to such a train of thought. The aspect of the country was different from any I had ever seen before; and it was not till I discovered a bunch of violets close by my feet that I became aware that it was a familiar perfume which had so mysteriously carried me back to by-gone days. On another occasion, when at sea in the Indian Ocean, after many dreary months of absence from home, I one day accidentally found in the pocket of an old coat a paper of fine-cut chewing tobacco. With what delight I grasped the glittering treasure and applied it to my nose can only be conceived by a true lover of the weed—I speak not of your voracious chewers, who masticate this delectable narcotic as if it were food for the stomach instead of nutriment for the soul, but of the genuine devotee, who can appreciate the divinest essence, the rarest delicacies of tone and touch, the most exquisite shades of sentiment in this wondrous weed. What a luxury, after months of dreary longing—what an oasis in the desert of life! No attar of roses could be sweeter than that paper of fine-cut. I played with it—just titillating the nostrils—for hours before I dared to descend to the coarse process of chewing. And then—ah heavens! can mortal mixture ever equal that first chew again! How bright and beautiful the world looked! What happy remembrances I reveled in all that day, of serenades, and oyster-suppers, and pretty girls, and a thousand other fascinations of early youth, all of which grew out of a paper of fine-cut.

My experiences in Sweden were even more delightful in this respect than in Russia. At Stockholm I saw drunken men every day, and at Gottenburg it was the prevailing trait. The trouble was to see a man who was not laboring under a pressure of bricks in his hat. On one occasion I must have seen in the course of a single afternoon several hundred reeling home in the highest possible condition of ecstasy—either that, or the streets were so badly paved, and the roads so devious and undulating, that they made people stagger to keep straight. It was on the occasion of a fair, and may perhaps have been an exception to the general rule. One thing is certain—it looked very natural, and made me cotton wonderfully to these good people. There was something really homelike in a reeling, staggering crowd—their shouts and uproarious songs, their boozy faces and tobacco-stained months. Every body seemed to be on a regular “bender.” The only point of difference between the Swedish and the California “bender” was in the way the boys hugged and kissed the peasant-girls; but even in this respect a similitude may sometimes be found in the vicinity of the Indian Reservations, where I have seen Digger damsels treated quite as affectionately. However, it was all right, so long as both parties were willing. I rather liked the Gottenburg custom myself—as a spectator, of course. My last and perhaps most agreeable experience connected with the pleasures of sympathy occurred in Norway, on the road from Christiania to Trondhjem. With profound humiliation I make the confession that I have never yet been able to eradicate a natural passion for tobacco. Once, after reading the Rev. Dr. Cox’s terrific book on the Horrors of Tobacco, in which it was conclusively shown that a single drop of the oil of this noxious weed put upon a cat’s tongue killed the cat, I resolved to master this vicious propensity for poison. For six months I neither smoked, snuffed, nor chewed. But it came back somehow. Care, I think, revived it, and every body knows that care, as well as tobacco, killed a cat. A man might as well be killed one way as another. We must all eat our peck of dirt, and in some shape or other swallow our peck of poison. One learned gentleman proves that tobacco is poison; another, that coffee and tea are equally fatal; another, that meat is no better, and so on; our food and drink are pretty much composed of poison, so that we are constantly killing ourselves, and the result is, we die at last. Still, it is marvelous how long some people survive all these deadly stimulants; how fat and hearty the Germans are in spite of their meerschaums; how wonderfully the French survive their strong coffee; how the Russians deluge their stomachs with hot tea and yet still live; how the English get over their porter and brown stout; and how long it takes the various poisons to which the various nations of the earth are addicted to produce any sensible diminution in the population. Sometimes I am inclined to think people would die if they never ate a particle of any thing—either food or poison. It seems to be one of those debts that we incur on coming into the world, and can only discharge by going out of it.

All of which leads you gradually to the main point—my experience in Norway. First, however, I must tell you that on my arrival in Europe, not being able to find a plug of genuine Cavendish, I was forced to satisfy the cravings of this morbid appetite by nibbling bad cigars. But a new difficulty soon became manifest—there was not a spot in all Germany where it was possible to get rid of a quid without attracting undue attention. No man likes to be stared at as an outlaw against the recognized decencies of life. One may smoke cigars under a lady’s nose, dress like a popinjay, or kiss his bearded friend in most Continental cities, but he must not chew tobacco, because it is considered a barbarous and filthy habit. He may guzzle beer, take snuff, and wear dirty shirts, but if he would avoid reproach as an unclean animal he must abandon his quids. Now, as a general rule, I dislike to violate public sentiment, or inconvenience people with whom I associate. If they are nonsensical and inconsistent in their notions, I agree with them for the sake of harmony, if not for politeness. Nothing pleases me better than to annoy an Englishman by doing every thing that he most dislikes, because he makes it a point to be disagreeable and unmannerly; carries his nationality wherever he goes, and it does me good to furnish him with material for criticism. Out of pure good nature, I meet him half way; chew and spit that he may grumble, and put my legs over the back of the nearest chair to see him enjoy a good hearty fit of disgust, and talk loud that he may find material for ill-natured reflections on American manners—all of which, I know, is exactly what obliges him. It affords him such undeniable grounds for the depreciation of others, and the indulgence of his own weak vanity!

In like manner I obliged my German friends, who, however, are altogether different in their exactions, and only require Americans to drop all their uncivilized habits, and become like themselves—quiet, decent, and respectable old fogies. Therefore I obeyed the laws, doffed my savage California costume, quit whisky, took to beer, avoided all passages of tenderness toward the female sex, and herded mostly with men. For a time, however, I held on to my beloved quid of cigar. It was such a solace in the midst of all these privations! But, alas! I had to give that up too; there was not a spot in all Germany suitable for the purpose of expectoration! The floors of the houses are so dreadfully clean—not a piece of carpet bigger than a rug to sit upon; the porcelain stoves so inaccessible; the windows always shut; every nook and corner blazing with little ornaments; the lady of the house so severely conscious of every movement; even the little earthen pans near the stove, filled with white sand nicely smoothed over to represent salt-cellars—the ostensible spittoons of the establishment—staring one in the face with a cold, steady gaze amounting to a positive prohibition—no, the thing was impossible! I saw plainly that a good, old-fashioned squirt of tobacco-juice would ruin such a country as this, where every room in every house was inimical to the habit, and every speck of ground throughout the length and breadth of the land adapted to some useful or ornamental purpose. Why, sir, I assure you that in the little duchy of Nassau—where it is said the grand-duke is unable to exercise his soldiers at target-shooting without obtaining permission to place the target in some neighboring state—I found the garden-walks and public roads so fearfully clean, every leaf and twig being swept up daily, and preserved to manure the duchy, that during a pedestrian tour of three days I was absolutely ashamed to spit any where. There was no possible chance of doing it without expunging a soldier or a policeman, or disfiguring the entire province. The result was, between tobacco-juice, salt water, iron water, sulphur water, soda-water, and all other sorts of water that came out of the earth from Brunnens of Nassau, I got home as thin as a snake, and was forced to deny myself even the poor consolation of a Frankfort cigar. So matters went on for nearly a year. I became a morose and melancholy man. This will account for all the bitter and ill-natured things I said of the Germans in some of my sketches, every word of which I now retract. But to come to the point of the narrative. In the due course of a vagabond life, after visiting Russia and Sweden, I found myself one day on the road from Lillehammer to the Dorre Fjeld in Norway. I sat in a little cariole—an old peasant behind. The scenery was sublime. Poetry crept over my inmost soul. The old man leaned over and said something. Great heavens! What a combination of luxuries! His breath smelled of whisky and tobacco. I was enchanted. I turned and gazed fondly and affectionately in his withered old face. Two streams of rich juice coursed down his furrowed chin. His leathery and wrinkled mouth was besmeared with the precious fluid; his eyes rolled foolishly in his head; he hung on to the cariole with a trembling and unsteady hand; a delicious odor pervaded the entire man. I saw that he was a congenial soul—cottoned to him at once—grasped him by the hand—swore he was the first civilized human I had met in all my travels through Europe—and called upon him, in the name of the great American brotherhood of chewers, to pass me a bite of his tobacco. From that moment we were the best of friends. The old man dived into the depths of a greasy pocket, pulled out a roll of black pigtail, and with joy beaming from every feature, saw me tear from it many a goodly mouthful. We talked—he in Norwegian, I in a mixture of German and English; we chewed; we spat; we laughed and joked; we forgot all the discrepancies of age, nativity, condition, and future prospects; in short, we were brothers, by the sublime and potent free-masonry of tobacco. All that day my senses were entranced. I saw nothing but familiar faces, gulches, caÑons, bar-rooms, and boozy stage-drivers; smelt nothing but whisky and tobacco in every flower by the wayside; aspired to nothing but Congress and the suffrages of my fellow-citizens. I was once again in my own, my beloved California.