Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/137

 said, "should you enjoy seeing her blow the smoke through her lips and hearing her wisely consider the legal consequences of registering at a hotel under the names of 'John Doe and Wife'?"

"If I had a daughter," I replied cautiously, "I have a sentimental notion that I should like to have one who at the age of seventeen would feel the æsthetic impropriety of smoking, and who at any rate would not feel her nerves on edge without tobacco. But suppose Heaven visited the sins of the father upon the child by giving me a—well, a 'modern' daughter. If my daughter, after emitting the smoke, ejaculated the word 'Geese!' with a good accent, and a clear cool sound of conviction, and a kind of contemptuous remoteness from Greenwich Village problems, why I think I should feel mightily reassured. I should be positively glad to have heard her express her mind on this strong topic. And if tobacco helped her to express her mind, as it helps me to express mine, I might even feel mildly grateful to the tobacco."

"You know you would not," said Cornelia.

"Perhaps you are right. But at any rate, I can conceive of no person more properly subject for satire than a man with the fifth cigar of the morning in his mouth taking up the battle axe to