After the discussion there was a supper, and talk, and
cigars. This supper began at ten o'clock promptly, and the company broke
up and went away at midnight. At least they did except upon one
occasion. In my recent Birthday speech I remarked upon the fact that I
have always bought cheap cigars, and that is true. I have never bought
costly ones.

Well, that night at the Club meeting--as I was saying--George, our
colored butler, came to me when the supper was nearly over, and I
noticed that he was pale. Normally his complexion was a clear black, and
very handsome, but now it had modified to old amber. He said:

"Mr. Clemens, what are we going to do? There is not a cigar in the house
but those old Wheeling long nines. Can't nobody smoke them but you. They
kill at thirty yards. It is too late to telephone--we couldn't get any
cigars out from town--what can we do? Ain't it best to say nothing, and
let on that we didn't think?"

"No," I said, "that would not be honest. Fetch out the long
nines"--which he did.

I had just come across those "long nines" a few days or a week before. I
hadn't seen a long nine for years. When I was a cub pilot on the
Mississippi in the late '50's, I had had a great affection for them,
because they were not only--to my mind--perfect, but you could get a
basketful of them for a cent--or a dime, they didn't use cents out there
in those days. So when I saw them advertised in Hartford I sent for a
thousand at once. They came out to me in badly battered and
disreputable-looking old square pasteboard boxes, two hundred in a box.
George brought a box, which was caved in on all sides, looking the worst
it could, and began to pass them around. The conversation had been
brilliantly animated up to that moment--but now a frost fell upon the
company. That is to say, not all of a sudden, but the frost fell upon
each man as he took up a cigar and held it poised in the air--and there,
in the middle, his sentence broke off. That kind of thing went on all
around the table, until when George had completed his crime the whole
place was full of a thick solemnity and silence.

Those men began to light the cigars. Rev. Dr. Parker was the first man
to light. He took three or four heroic whiffs--then gave it up. He got
up with the remark that he had to go to the bedside of a sick
parishioner. He started out. Rev. Dr. Burton was the next man. He took
only one whiff, and followed Parker. He furnished a pretext, and you