It may be truly said that the Father left the discovery of Woman to his
Son, for nowhere in the Rubaiyat of Naishapur's poet is full justice
done to the charms of the fair. Even in his most ardent passages old
Omar uttered no more than a eulogy to Friendship.

Where the philosophy of the elder Omar was bacchanalian and epicurean,
that of the Son was tobacchanalian and eclectic, allowing excess only in
moderation, as it were, and countenancing nothing more violent than
poetic license. However, we are led to believe that the tastes of his
time called for a certain mild sensuality as the gustatio to a feast of
reason, and had Omar Khayyam lived in our own day he would doubtless
have agreed with a reverend Erlington and Bosworth Professor in the
University of Cambridge who boldly asserts that the literature redolent
of nothing but the glories of asceticism "deserves the credit due to
goodness of intention, and nothing else."

Due doubtless to the preservative influence of smoke Omar Khayyam, Jr.,
was enabled to live to the hale age of one hundred and seven, and to go
to an apotheosis fully worthy his greatness. Among the native
chroniclers the quatrain (number XCVIII) -

"Then let the balmed Tobacco be my Sheath,
The ardent Weed above me and beneath,
And let me like a living Incense rise,
A Fifty-Cent Cigar between my Teeth,"

has been the source of much relentless debate. By some it is held that
this stanza is prophetic in its nature, foreseeing the transcendent
miracle of the poet's death; by others it is as stoutly maintained that