MY LADY NICOTINE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 293, 4 September 1908, Page 8

MY LADY NICOTINE.

PIPE VERSUS CIGARETTE. .;, A BATTLE FOR POPULARITY. . Probably no aboriginal'race on the faceof the earth—or now departed from it—has contributed;; by his traditions and personal characteristics, so much to tho literaturo of adventure and romance as the Red Indian. His picturesque savagery,, hii methods of warfare, and his tribal customs have supplied story writers, from tho author of ; the "penny dreadful" right, up to most able novelists, with a fine field for; their enterprise. The dear public, • when all is said and done, likes its "thrill," .and upon this idiosyncriicy has been built up the popularity of tho "Red Indian" story, the "powerful 'melodrama," the murder trial, and "Police Gazette." ' But if tho Red Indian' has contributed generously to the."thrills" of tho.world, lie has also contributed to its peace', for the very first man who was caugnt in-the act of smoking was this self-same savage. . Since then, men have smoked—primitively, in the beginning, with rough pipes, and coarse .tobacco, -then with growing fastidiousness. Castes of society created castes in tobacco r-cigars for "My L6rd"; the black shiny "cutty," with its evil-smelling contents, for "Hodge." Then came the, dainty white .cylinder—tho cigarette—which found a ready salo among the "exquisites." They sported them,:, airily between tho ■ fore and second fingers, puffed as only the "exquisites" could puff. Mr. J. M. Barrie then, in a • mtiniier of speaking, gave to the Indian weed a touch of romance; knighted, it, in fact, and sinco then My Lady Nicotine has had countless worshippers. . '' Now there is, metaphorically speaking,- war in- Arcadia. From being the,.affectation of the ages of, say, : 17 and 25, the cigarette has become the habit of so many of the multitude tliat the pipe now finds, itself in serious danger of: being displaced from its high . popularity, "Whether there is now more cigarette than pipe tobacco smoked' is a question.