The connection between lofty ideals and smoking is, I would argue, the same as the connection between lofty ideals and doing nothing. Smoking is idleness, and it is hard to be lofty when you’re toiling and busy. Like angling, smoking transforms the common man into something more heroic, more complete; it makes a master of a serf. ‘The pipe,’ wrote William Makepeace Thackeray, ‘draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouths of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.’
Smoking
