This Victorian trade card which entreats us to "Chew MOZART NAVY TOBACCO" features one of the most attractive illustrations in my collection, and one of the most bizarre, and just plain wrong, descriptions on the reverse.
The front shows a chubby child dressed in Macaroni fashion while another child in a chef's costume makes what appears to be pancakes. It's framed in a lovely floral border. Okay, that's odd enough. But, just read this...
I think, after reading the whole thing, it's meant to be funny, but it's just...wrong.
THE TOBACCO
From which Kauffman & Runge's MOZART is made is grown in conservatories, and the lumps rolled on mahogany tables by thoroughbred Ethiopians in swallow-tail coats and white kid gloves. When a man takes a chew of this tobacco, he walks on air, dreams that he has a diamond scarf-pin, a sixty-five-dollar suit of clothes on, and just married rich. It makes the breath sweet, and keeps the teeth white, and will force a moustache on the smoothest lip in five weeks. It improves and beautifies the complexion, eradicated tans, freckles, and dandruff, and is a sure cure for heart-burn, dyspepsia and rheumatism. The SINGLE man who chews this tobacco will find the girls doting over him, and the MARRIED man who uses it can get along peaceably with his mother-in-law. It will fasten the front gate every night and carry in the "NEWS" in the morning; chase the cats off the garden, drive the hens off to water, can "hardly ever" fail to make one feel better all over. No well-regulated family can properly keep house without it, for the man who chews this tobacco will never cut wood too long for the stove, never swear when he puts up a stove pipe, never step on a lady's train, join a club, or go down to "the post office after supper."
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