Japanese fans on the wall,
which are things of beauty, though your artistic taste may not be
sufficiently educated to let you know it except by hearsay; and it is
pleasant to feel that they were bought with money which, in the foolish
old days, would have been squandered on a box of cigars. In like manner
every pretty trifle in the room reminds you how much wiser you are now
than you used to be. It is even gratifying to stand in summer at the
drawing-room window and watch the very cabbies passing with cigars in
their mouths. At the same time, if I had the making of the laws I would
prohibit people's smoking in the street. If they are married men, they
are smoking drawing-room fire-screens and mantelpiece borders for the
pink-and-gold room. If they are bachelors, it is a scandal that
bachelors should get the best of everything.

Nothing is more pitiable than the way some men of my acquaintance
enslave themselves to tobacco.

Nay, worse, they make an idol of some one particular tobacco. I know a
man who considers a certain mixture so superior to all others that he
will walk three miles for it. Surely every one will admit that this
is lamentable. It is not even a good mixture, for I used to try it
occasionally; and if there is one man in London who knows tobaccoes it
is myself. There is only one mixture in London deserving the adjective
superb. I will not say where it is to be got, for the result would
certainly be that many foolish men would smoke more than ever; but I
never knew anything to compare to it. It is deliciously mild yet full of
fragrance, and it never burns the tongue. If you try it once you smoke
it ever afterward. It clears the brain and soothes the temper. When
I went away for a holiday anywhere I took as much of that exquisite
health-giving mixture as I thought would last me the whole time, but
I always ran out of it. Then I telegraphed to London for more, and was
miserable until it arrived. How I tore the lid off the canister! That
is a tobacco to live for. But I am better without it.

Occasionally I feel a little depressed after dinner still, without being
able to say why, and if my wife has left me, I wander about the room
restlessly, like one who misses something. Usually, however, she takes
me with her to the drawing-room, and reads aloud her delightfully long
home-letters or plays soft music to me. If the music be sweet and sad it
takes me away to a stair in an inn, which I climb gayly, and shake