CAREFUL SCRUTINY

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2670, 15 September 1937, Page 8

CAREFUL SCRUTINY

SMALL BOY’S OPINION A HAND-MADE CIGARETTE WELLINGTON TRAM EPISODE. He was a very small boy, but he had managed to evade his womenfolk, and he was sitting all alone in the central compartment of a Wellington tram. His large brown eyes carefully scrutinised the other passengers, their clothes and faces, and the swaying activities of the conductor. Screwing his head round he discovered that the man in the seat directly behind him was starting to roll a cigarette. He watched him unwinkingly for the next six minutes.

Methodically the smoker’s hands opened the tin of tobacco, peeled off a paper from the packet, and pinched a finger and thumb full of the golden shredded weed. The brown eyes widened as the cigarette took shape. The products of three nations and two civilisations were being moulded to satisfy the appetite of one humble smoker going about his daily life in an outpost of the Empire. The American tobacco, the English paper, and the Japanese match were all helping to fashion a “smoke” before the wondering eyes of a small boy.

His fixed stare was not noticed by the smoker whose fingers rolled and pinched, pressed and folded the tobacco and the paper as he wet his lips preparatory to sealing the slim cylinder. Finally it was ready to be licked. * It was a well-made cigarette, firm and well-proportioned, the final development of a series of processes that had been linked together from the scattered surface of the globe.

Slant-eyed Orientals had made the match that was to ignite the product, English skies had lowered over the factories that made the paper, and dusky hands had reaped the crop of tobacco leaf gilded in the sunshine of Virginia. The small boy’s gaze was wise, perhaps he sensed the romantic machinations of the industries that reached their goal in the twiddling hands and moistened tongue of a fellow-citizen in a tramcar. Perhaps he had not seen a cigarette made before.

The tram stopped with a faintly frustrated air and waited on a loop for another car to pass it. There was a silence as the smoker lit his match and dragged deeply at his cigarette, then the sighing spout of yellowish smoke whirled round the small boy’s head, a scatter of ash fell on his shoulders, and he wrinkled his nose at the onslaught.

He did not cease his watch for an instant. Slowly the cigarette straightened and sank as it was sucked down to a stub. The small boy wriggled on his seat and said, “Is it nice?”

The smoker looked at him stolidly. “Yes.”

“Gosh, but it smells, doesn’t it?” said the small boy with an air of finality, and he resumed his inspection of the conductor.