<h2>IN DEFENSE OF AN OFFERING</h2>
<h3>BY SEWELL FORD</h3>
<p>Gracious! You're not going to smoke again? I do believe, my dear, that
you're getting to be a regular, etc., etc. (Voice from across the
reading table.)</p>
<p>A slave to tobacco! Not I. Singular, the way you women misuse nouns. I
am, rather, a chosen acolyte in the temple of Nicotiana. Daily, aye,
thrice daily—well, call it six, then—do I make burnt offering. Now
some use censers of clay, others employ censers of rare white earth
finely carved and decked with silver and gold. My particular censer, as
you see, is a plain, honest briar, a root dug from the banks of the blue
Garonne, whose only glory is its grain and color. The original tint, if
you remember, was like that of new-cut cedar, but use—I've been smoking
this one only two years now—has given it gloss and depth of tone which
put the finest mahogany to shame. Let me rub it on my sleeve. Now look!</p>
<p>There are no elaborate mummeries about our service in the temple of
Nicotiana. No priest or pastor, no robed muezzin or gowned prelate calls
me to the altar. Neither is there fixed hour or prescribed point of the
compass towards which I must turn. Whenever the mood comes and the
spirit listeth, I make devotion.</p>
<p>There are various methods, numerous brief litanies. Mine is a common and
simple one. I take the cut Indian leaf in the left palm, so, and roll it
gently about with the right, thus. Next I pack it firmly in the censer's
hollow bowl with neither too firm nor too light a pressure. Any<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_1249" id="Page_1249"></SPAN></span> fire
will do. The torch need not be blessed. Thanks, I have a match.</p>
<p>Now we are ready. With the surplus breath of life you draw in the
fragrant spirit of the weed. With slow, reluctant outbreathing you loose
it on the quiet air. Behold! That which was but a dead thing, lives.
Perhaps we have released the soul of some brave red warrior who, long
years ago, fell in glorious battle and mingled his dust with the
unforgetting earth. Each puff may give everlasting liberty to some dead
and gone aboriginal. If you listen you may hear his far-off chant.
Through the curling blue wreaths you may catch a glimpse of the happy
hunting grounds to which he has now gone. That is the part of the
service whose losing or gaining depends upon yourself.</p>
<p>The first whiff is the invocation, the last the benediction. When you
knock out the ashes you should feel conscious that you have done a good
deed, that the offering has not been made in vain.</p>
<p>Slave! Still that odious word? Well, have it your own way. Worshipers at
every shrine have been thus persecuted.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_1250" id="Page_1250"></SPAN></span></p>
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