Some of their leaders must have foreseen that the catastrophe was coming months before it occurred; but, if they did so, they were afraid to make their opinion public.
On returning to the hotel, I found it full of people of all classes indulging in tobacco (the only solace left them) in every form.

It is all very well to say that smoking is a vile habit; so it may be, when indulged in by luxurious fellows who eat and drink their full every day, and are rarely without a cigar or pipe in their mouths; it may, perhaps, be justly said that such men abuse the use of the glorious narcotic supplied by Providence for men's consolation under difficulties.

But when a man has hard mental and bodily work, and barely enough food to support nature, water being his only drink, then give him tobacco, and he will thoroughly appreciate it.

Besides, it will do him real good.

I think that at any time its use in moderation is harmless and often beneficial, but under the circumstances I speak of it is a luxury without price.
During the evening I met at the hotel a Confederate naval officer who was going to attempt that night to carry havoc among the blockading squadron by means of a cigar-shaped vessel of a very curious description.
This vessel was a screw steamer of sixty feet in length, with eight feet beam.