differ. We take his cigar, but we manage a substitution furtively. From long habit—backed by prejudice and superstition—I dread those high-priced Havanas with a fancy label around them; a label which costs the hundredth part of a cent, and augments the price of the cigar twenty-seven degrees beyond its value. I have accepted tons of those; and given them to the poor. It is not that I hate the poor, for I do not; but only because I cannot bring myself to waste anything, even a fancy-labeled execrable cigar.
Not more than two persons in eight hundred thousand know even their own cigars when they are outside of the box; they think they do, but that is another superstition. Years ago several friends of mine used to come to my house every Friday night to play billiards. They patiently smoked my cheap cigars and never said a wounding word about them. With one exception. That was a gentleman who thought he knew all about cigars, and whose opinion was like the rest of the world’s—not valuable. He had a high-priced brand of his own, and he did not like my cheap weeds. He tried to smoke them, but he growled all the time, and always threw the cigar away after a few whiffs, and tried another and another and another. He did that all one winter. The truth was, that they were his own cigars, not mine. By request, his wife sent me a couple of dozen every Friday afternoon. He may not believe this when he sees it in print, but the other witnesses are there yet, and they will confirm the truth of my statement.
And I have another case. One winter, along in those years, I heard that the “long nine” of fifty years ago was being manufactured and marketed again, and I was glad, for I had smoked them when I was a lad of nine or ten and knew that twelve or fifteen of them could be depended upon to make a day pass pleasantly at light cost. I sent to Wheeling and laid in a supply, at 27 cents a barrel. They were delightful. But their personal appearance was distinctly against them; and besides they came in boxes that were not attractive; boxes that held a hundred each and were made of coarse blue pasteboard; boxes that were crazy, and battered, and caved in, and ugly and vulgar and plebian, and looked like the nation. Just the aspect of the box itself would make anybody sea-sick but me; with the burnt-rag aspect of its homely contents added, the result was truly formidable.
I could not venture to offer these things, undisguised, to my friends, for I had no desire to be shot; so I put fancy labels around a lot of them, and kept them in a polished mahogany box with a perforated false bottom that had a damp sponge under it; and gave them a large Spanish name which nobody could spell but myself and no ignorant person could pronounce; and said that these cigars were a present to me from the Captain General of Cuba, and were not procurable for money at any price. These simple devices were successful. My friends contemplated the long nines with the deepest reverence, and smoked them the whole evening in an ecstasy of happiness, and went away grateful to me and with their souls steeped in a sacred joy.
I carried the experiment no further, but dropped it there. A year later these same men were at my house to discuss a topic of some sort—for it was a social club, and its members met fortnightly at each other’s houses in the winter time, and discussed questions of the day, and finished with a late supper and much smoking. This time, in the midst of the supper, the colored waiter came to me, looking as pale as amber, and whispered and said he had forgotten to provide proper cigars, and there was no substitute in the house but the vulgar long nines in the blue pasteboard boxes—what should he do? I said pass them around and say nothing—we could not help ourselves at this late hour. He passed them.
It was usual for these people to smoke and talk an hour and a half. But this time they did not do that. They looked at the battered blue box
Not more than two persons in eight hundred thousand know even their own cigars when they are outside of the box; they think they do, but that is another superstition. Years ago several friends of mine used to come to my house every Friday night to play billiards. They patiently smoked my cheap cigars and never said a wounding word about them. With one exception. That was a gentleman who thought he knew all about cigars, and whose opinion was like the rest of the world’s—not valuable. He had a high-priced brand of his own, and he did not like my cheap weeds. He tried to smoke them, but he growled all the time, and always threw the cigar away after a few whiffs, and tried another and another and another. He did that all one winter. The truth was, that they were his own cigars, not mine. By request, his wife sent me a couple of dozen every Friday afternoon. He may not believe this when he sees it in print, but the other witnesses are there yet, and they will confirm the truth of my statement.
And I have another case. One winter, along in those years, I heard that the “long nine” of fifty years ago was being manufactured and marketed again, and I was glad, for I had smoked them when I was a lad of nine or ten and knew that twelve or fifteen of them could be depended upon to make a day pass pleasantly at light cost. I sent to Wheeling and laid in a supply, at 27 cents a barrel. They were delightful. But their personal appearance was distinctly against them; and besides they came in boxes that were not attractive; boxes that held a hundred each and were made of coarse blue pasteboard; boxes that were crazy, and battered, and caved in, and ugly and vulgar and plebian, and looked like the nation. Just the aspect of the box itself would make anybody sea-sick but me; with the burnt-rag aspect of its homely contents added, the result was truly formidable.
I could not venture to offer these things, undisguised, to my friends, for I had no desire to be shot; so I put fancy labels around a lot of them, and kept them in a polished mahogany box with a perforated false bottom that had a damp sponge under it; and gave them a large Spanish name which nobody could spell but myself and no ignorant person could pronounce; and said that these cigars were a present to me from the Captain General of Cuba, and were not procurable for money at any price. These simple devices were successful. My friends contemplated the long nines with the deepest reverence, and smoked them the whole evening in an ecstasy of happiness, and went away grateful to me and with their souls steeped in a sacred joy.
I carried the experiment no further, but dropped it there. A year later these same men were at my house to discuss a topic of some sort—for it was a social club, and its members met fortnightly at each other’s houses in the winter time, and discussed questions of the day, and finished with a late supper and much smoking. This time, in the midst of the supper, the colored waiter came to me, looking as pale as amber, and whispered and said he had forgotten to provide proper cigars, and there was no substitute in the house but the vulgar long nines in the blue pasteboard boxes—what should he do? I said pass them around and say nothing—we could not help ourselves at this late hour. He passed them.
It was usual for these people to smoke and talk an hour and a half. But this time they did not do that. They looked at the battered blue box
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