THE KING OF SMOKERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18275, 16 December 1922, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE KING OF SMOKERS.

A CIGAR-BOX COFFIN.

Berlin, before the war, had a Smokers' Club, all the members of which were ardent and methodical devotees of the fragrant weed. Each member s daily aEbwance of tobacco consistad of six pipes, six cigars, and six cigarettes. B v a steady average of fourteen cigars a day William Pattison, of Michigan, managed in twenty years to account for 100.000 excellent weeds, a number that drew upon him the expostulation of his friends, on the ground that such excess was prejudicial to long life; to which he opposed the fact that Goethe, though he drank 20,000 bottles of wine, lived to be eighty-three. So he Bmoked on unconcernedly, and died at the age of eightynine. Some years since, at Vienna, there died in his seventy-third year, an old man beside whose smoking record that of William Pattison appears quite insignificant. I From his twenty-seventh year ho kept an exact account of his consumption of beer and tobacco. In his fifty-fourth year he became a teetotaller, after having drunk 28.786 glasses of ale —a very moderate tally, working out at but three a day. But it is of his immoderate smoking, which he continued till his death, that we have to speak. In forty-five years he smoked no fewer than 628,713 cigars, or 13,971 a year, giving an average of thirty-eight a day. Out of this gigantic total 43,500 were g'ven him at various times, leaving 535,213, which, although this Austrian devotee at the shrine of " My Lady. Nicotine " never paid more than a penny for each one, cost nearly £2500.

But even this marvellous record is beaten by that of Mynheer Van Klaes, known by the nicknnme of the " King of the Smokers." He was eighty-one at the time of his decease, and sometimes smoked as much as ten pounds of tobacco in a week. How strong with him wan the ruling passion in death was shown by his funeral.

At his express desire he was placed in a coffin lined with the wood of old cigar boxes. Bv his side, were laid his favourite china-bowled pipe, a box of matches, flint, steel and tinder. Around his grave was gathered a circle of Kotterdarn smokers, each with his pipe, from which, at the words, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," he shook the ashes on to the coffin lid. To each of these mourners the deceased left ten pounds of tobacco and two pipes bearing his arms.