Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

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According to etiquette and the custom of the court, Persian princes must have seven hours for sleep. When they get up, they begin to smoke the narghilè or shishe, and they continue smoking all day long. When there is company, the narghilè is first presented to the chief of the assembly, who, after two or three whiffs, hands it to the next, and so on it goes descending; but in general, the great smoke only with the great, or with strangers of distinction. The Schah smokes by himself, or only with one of his brothers, the tombak, the smoke of which is of a very superior kind, the odour being exquisite. It is the finest tombak of Shiraz.

Mr. Neale says—“Talk about the Turks being great smokers; why, the Siamese beat them to nothing. I have often seen a child only just able to toddle about, and certainly not more than two years of age, quit its mother’s breast to go and get a whiff from papa’s cigaret, or, as they are here termed, borees—cigarets made of the dried leaf of the plantain tree, inside of which the tobacco is rolled up.”