as as notorious for costly
and elegant cigars as I was for cheap and devilish ones. I called at his
house and when no one was looking borrowed a double handful of his very
choicest; cigars which cost him forty cents apiece and bore red-and-gold
labels in sign of their nobility. I removed the labels and put the
cigars into a box with my favorite brand on it--a brand which those
people all knew, and which cowed them as men are cowed by an epidemic.
They took these cigars when offered at the end of the supper, and lit
them and sternly struggled with them--in dreary silence, for hilarity
died when the fell brand came into view and started around--but their
fortitude held for a short time only; then they made excuses and filed
out, treading on one another's heels with indecent eagerness; and in the
morning when I went out to observe results the cigars lay all between
the front door and the gate. All except one--that one lay in the plate
of the man from whom I had cabbaged the lot. One or two whiffs was all
he could stand. He told me afterward that some day I would get shot for
giving people that kind of cigars to smoke.

Am I certain of my own standard? Perfectly; yes, absolutely--unless
somebody fools me by putting my brand on some other kind of cigar; for
no doubt I am like the rest, and know my cigar by the brand instead of
by the flavor. However, my standard is a pretty wide one and covers a
good deal of territory. To me, almost any cigar is good that nobody
else will smoke, and to me almost all cigars are bad that other people
consider good. Nearly any cigar will do me, except a Havana. People
think they hurt my feelings when then come to my house with their life
preservers on--I mean, with their own cigars in their pockets. It is
an error; I take care of myself in a similar way. When I go into
danger--that is, into rich people's houses, where, in the nature of
things, they will have high-tariff cigars, red-and-gilt girded and
nested in a rosewood box along with a damp sponge, cigars which develop
a dismal black ash and burn down the side and smell, and will grow hot
to the fingers, and will go on growing hotter and hotter, and go on
smelling more and more infamously and unendurably the deeper the fire
tunnels down inside below the thimbleful of honest tobacco that is in
the front end, the furnisher of it praising it all the time and telling
you how much the deadly thing cost--yes, when I go into that sort of
peril I ca