From Chapter 2: Tobacco engages
Both sexes, all ages,
The poor as well as the wealthy;
From the court to the cottage,
From childhood to dotage,
Both those that are sick and the healthy.
This chapter and the next deal with the history of
smoking during the first fifty years after its introduction as a social habit—roughly to 1630.
The use
of tobacco spread with extraordinary rapidity among all classes of society. During the latter part of Queen Elizabeth's reign and through the early decades of the seventeenth century tobacco-pipes were in full blast. Tobacco was triumphant.
From Chapter 5: The arrival of coffee and the establishment of coffee-houses opened a new field for the victories
of tobacco. The first house was opened in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, in 1652. Others soon followed, and in a short time the new beverage had captured the town, and coffee-houses had been opened in every direction. They sold many things besides coffee, and served a variety of purposes, but primarily they were temples of talk and good-fellowship. The buzz of conversation and the smoke
of tobacco alike filled the rooms which were the forerunners of the club-houses of a much later day.
