My Tobacco-pouch

I once knew a lady who said of her husband that he looked nice when

sitting with a rug over him. My female relatives seemed to have the

same opinion of my tobacco-pouch; for they never saw it, even in my own

room, without putting a book or pamphlet over it. They called it that

thing, and made tongs of their knitting-needles to lift it; and when I

indignantly returned it to my pocket, they raised their hands to signify

hat I would not listen to reason. It seemed to come natural to other

persons to present me with new tobacco-pouches, until I had nearly a

score lying neglected in drawers. But I am not the man to desert an old

friend that has been with me everywhere and thoroughly knows my ways.

Once, indeed, I came near to being unfaithful to my tobacco-pouch, and

I mean to tell how--partly as a punishment to myself.






The incident took place several years ago. Gilray and I had set out on a

walking tour of the Shakespeare country; but we separated at Stratford,

which was to be our starting-point, because he would not wait for me. I

am more of a Shakespearian student than Gilray, and Stratford affected

me so much that I passed day after day smoking reverently at the hotel

door; while he, being of the pure tourist type (not that I would say

a word against Gilray), wanted to rush from one place of interest to

another. He did not understand what thoughts came to me as I strolled

down the Stratford streets; and in the hotel, when I lay down on the

sofa, he said I was sleeping, though I was really picturing to myself

Shakespeare's boyhood. Gilray even went the length of arguing that it

would not be a walking tour at all if we never made a start; so, upon

the whole, I was glad when he departed alone. The next day was a

memorable one to me. In the morning I wrote to my London tobacconist for

more Arcadia. I had quarrelled with both of the Stratford tobacconists.

The one of them, as soon as he saw my tobacco-pouch, almost compelled

me to buy a new one. The second was even more annoying. I paid with a

half-sovereign for the tobacco I had got from him; but after gazing at

the pouch he became suspicious of the coin, and asked if I could not pay

him in silver. An insult to my pouch I considered an insult to myself;

so I returned to those shops no more. The evening of the day on which

I wrote to London for tobacco brought me a letter from home saying that

my sister was seriously ill. I had left her in good health, so that the

news was the more distressing. Of course I returned home by the first

train. Sitting alone in a dull railway compartment, my heart was filled

with tenderness, and I recalled the occasions on which I had carelessly

given her pain. Suddenly I remembered that more than once she had

besought me with tears in her eyes to fling away my old tobacco-pouch.

She had always said that it was not respectable. In the bitterness of

self-reproach I pulled the pouch from my pocket, asking myself whether,

after all, the love of a good woman was not a far more precious

possession. Without giving myself time to hesitate, I stood up and

firmly cast my old pouch out at the window. I saw it fall at the foot

of a fence. The train shot on.









By the time I reached home my sister had been pronounced out of danger.

Of course I was much relieved to hear it, but at the same time this was

a lesson to me not to act rashly. The retention of my tobacco-pouch

would not have retarded her recovery, and I could not help picturing my

pouch, my oldest friend in the world, lying at the foot of that fence.

I saw that I had done wrong in casting it from me. I had not even the

consolation of feeling that if any one found it he would cherish it, for

it was so much damaged that I knew it could never appeal to a new owner

as it appealed to me. I had intended telling my sister of the sacrifice

made for her sake; but after seeing her so much better, I left the room

without doing so. There was Arcadia Mixture in the house, but I had not

the heart to smoke. I went early to bed, and fell into a troubled sleep,

from which I awoke with a shiver. The rain was driving against my

window, tapping noisily on it as if calling on me to awake and go back

for my tobacco-pouch. It rained far on into the morning, and I lay

miserably, seeing nothing before me but a wet fence, and a tobacco-pouch

among the grass at the foot of it.



On the following afternoon I was again at Stratford. So far as I could

remember, I had flung away the pouch within a few miles of the station;

but I did not look for it until dusk. I felt that the porters had their

eyes on me. By crouching along hedges I at last reached the railway a

mile or two from the station, and began my search. It may be thought

that the chances were against my finding the pouch; but I recovered it

without much difficulty. The scene as I flung my old friend out at the

window had burned itself into my brain, and I could go to the spot

to-day as readily as I went on that occasion. There it was, lying among

the grass, but not quite in the place where it had fallen. Apparently

some navvy had found it, looked at it, and then dropped it. It was

half-full of water, and here and there it was sticking together; but

I took it up tenderly, and several times on the way back to the station

I felt in my pocket to make sure that it was really there.






I have not described the appearance of my pouch, feeling that to be

unnecessary. It never, I fear, quite recovered from its night in the

rain, and as my female relatives refused to touch it, I had to sew it

together now and then myself. Gilray used to boast of a way of mending

a hole in a tobacco-pouch that was better than sewing. You put the two

pieces of gutta-percha close together and then cut them sharply with

scissors. This makes them run together, he says, and I believed him

until he experimented upon my pouch. However, I did not object to a hole

here and there. Wherever I laid that pouch it left a small deposit of

tobacco, and thus I could generally get together a pipeful at times

when other persons would be destitute. I never told my sister that my

pouch was once all but lost, but ever after that, when she complained

that I had never even tried to do without it, I smiled tenderly.