them. Sir John has been caught coming to bed particularly merry and
redolent of cigar-smoke; young George, from Eton, was absolutely found
in the little green-house puffing an Havana; and when discovered they
both lay the blame upon Fitz-Boodle. "It was Mr. Fitz-Boodle, mamma,"
says George, "who offered me the cigar, and I did not like to refuse
him." "That rascal Fitz seduced us, my dear," says Sir John, "and kept
us laughing until past midnight." Her ladyship instantly sets me down as
a person to be avoided. "George," whispers she to her boy, "promise me
on your honor, when you go to town, not to know that man." And when she
enters the breakfast-room for prayers, the first greeting is a peculiar
expression of countenance, and inhaling of breath, by which my lady
indicates the presence of some exceedingly disagreeable odor in the
room. She makes you the faintest of curtsies, and regards you, if not
with a "flashing eye," as in the novels, at least with a "distended
nostril." During the whole of the service, her heart is filled with the
blackest gall towards you; and she is thinking about the best means of
getting you out of the house.

What is this smoking that it should be considered a crime? I believe in
my heart that women are jealous of it, as of a rival. They speak of it
as of some secret, awful vice that seizes upon a man, and makes him a
pariah from genteel society. I would lay a guinea that many a lady who
has just been kind enough to rend the above lines lays down the book,
after this confession of mine that I am a smoker, and says, "Oh, the
vulgar wretch!" and passes on to something else.

The fact is, that the cigar IS a rival to the ladies, and their
conqueror too. In the chief pipe-smoking nations they are kept in
subjection. While the chief, Little White Belt, smokes, the women are
silent in his wigwam; while Mahomet Ben Jawbrahim causes volumes of