Parr smoked twenty pipes in an evening, and lived to be seventy-eight;
that Thomas Hobbes smoked thirteen, and survived to ninety-two; that
Brissiac of Trieste died at one hundred and sixteen, with a pipe in his
mouth; and that Henry Hartz of Schleswig used tobacco steadily from the
age of sixteen to one hundred and forty-two; nor would any accumulation
of such healthy old sinners prove anything satisfactory. It seems
rather overwhelming, to be sure, when Mr. Fairholt assures us that his
respected father "died at the age of seventy-two: he had been twelve
hours a day in a tobacco-manufactory for nearly fifty years; and he both
smoked and chewed while busy in the labors of the workshop, sometimes in
a dense cloud of steam from drying the damp tobacco over the stoves; and
his health and appetite were perfect to the day of his death: he was a
model of muscular and stomachic energy; in which his son, who neither
smokes, snuffs, nor chews, by no means rivals him." But until we know
precisely what capital of health the venerable tobacconist inherited
from his fathers, and in what condition he transmitted it to his sons,
the statement certainly has two edges.
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