Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/660

644 with me that it would have been good for him if he had never lit a cigar; for he suffers now if he can not smoke a half-dozen of them in the course of the day. The habit of smoking creates a factitious want that is, perhaps, more imperative than real wants, and which is a constant trouble to those who feel it. When I have a pressing engagement after dinner, I cut my meal short so as to have time to smoke a cigar; and there is to me nothing to suggest doubt in the story related by Philibert Audebrand of Father Schoëne, director of Louis Philippe's park of Monceaux, who loved two things—his plants and his pipe. From morning till night he lived in the garden, and from morning till night he carried a short pipe in his mouth, which he would not take out for any one. "It may pass before me," said Louis Philippe to him one day "but to smoke so in the presence of the queen and the princesses!" "Sire," replied Schoëne, "it is stronger than I am. If your majesty is not satisfied with my service, I shall have to present my account; I shall probably die with vexation over the matter, but it will be with my pipe between my teeth."

Do not enroll yourselves, then, beardless readers, in the battalions of Nicotia. Initiation into her mysteries has painful accompaniments, and her fervent worship brings troubles of another character. Tobacco is smoked in cigars, cigarettes, and pipes. Placed in contact with the mouth, the cigar, which can not escape some chewing, colors the saliva and charges it with the toxic principles of the tobacco—elements, principally nicotine, that should be carefully rejected. A person smoking only a simple light cigar may, perhaps, see the end of it without spitting, but, if he consumes any number of them, he must spit frequently. This exercise is less indispensable when a cigar-holder is used, and the adoption of such a mouth-piece is recommended by hygiene as a means of avoiding the direct contact of the mouth with the tobacco, and considerably diminishing the inconveniences of smoking. Cigar-holders are made of amber, shell, glass, bone, cherry, birch, lilac, jasmin, maple, and cane. Holders made from the last wood are the best, because they are generally longer than the others, whereby the smoke may become cooled, and because, being very cheap, they can be frequently renewed. Other inconveniences, involving questions of cleanliness, are avoided by the use of the cigar-holder. Too many hands touch the tobacco while it is being manufactured into a cigar for one to be able to say it has not been soiled, and cases of its having been the vehicle for conveying contagious disease are not unknown.

Havana cigars are the best, but how to get them? The coat does not make the monk, nor does the label make a real Havana. We read in the "Journal d'Hygiène" that cigars are bought at very cheap prices at various places in Europe, and then shipped to Havana, where they are boxed and labeled and sent back to Europe. According to M. Cardon, the matter is arranged more expeditiously at Hamburg and