LADIES COLUMN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6936, 27 October 1900, Page 3

LADIES COLUMN.

HE KEPT J^ PROMISE. I (English Magazine.} "When I proposed' I told her that I'd never smoke another cigar without her consent from the day we were married., I had to tell her that, or she wouldn't have gona to the altar with, me, for she comes from one of those families that's always ihad a minister in it for the last «ight hundred years or so, and the whole family have hated tobacco in all its forms for generations past —so that she ca,me legitimately by her standing on the nicotine question. That's why she made this stipulation. I craftily pub the accent on the word 'cigar,' but she didn't notice that. She never knew before we were married that I smoked anything but cigars, and so, when I made this promise about knocking off cigars after our marriage, she thought she had tho command of the situation. "I was bothered by that no-cigar promise from the first. I hankered for a smoke when we started off on our honeymoon 'trip, bub I staved off the desire the best way I could, although I'm bound to say that I found a sneaking satisfaction in the reflection that at was cigars only that I'd passed my promise about. "During the three weeks that we were away on the honeymoon I'll wager thait I yearned harder for a smoke about a yard long than any Tantalus ever hankered for a i mouthful of water, but I didn't want to break in on the otherwise happy situation, and I always steered out of the way of ! temptation when fellows come my way smoking big, fat cigars. " When we got back and started housekeeping 'the little home looked so cheerful and cosy in the evening that I ached all over for tobacco smoke. It somehow didn*t [seem like the proper thing to jump into I slippers and smoking jacket without having some sort of a nicotine accompaniment. But I held myself in for six whole days. "The second week I got desperate, and said to myself, 'It may be hard on the girl's ideals of the higher and nobler things, but I think I ought to have. a little consideration for myself. I won't be breaking any promise, anyway.' - " So the next day I bought a pipe with a bowl that ibeld just a. little under an ounce of coarse-cut, purchased the coarse-cut, put on a nice, pleasant expression, and pranced home. " The expression on her face when I produced that smoking outfit after dinner that evening stays with me yet. " ' But your solemn promise to me——' she began. ."'Relates solely to cigars,' was the rehearsed remark that I interrupted her with. " I had tie legal, theoretical, technical right in the matter, of course, but 'I felt a good deal like a ghotil as I loaded that pipe and lighted up. That was the smoke of ray life. I can feel it yet. She haunted me with the wounded-fa/wn look for a few days every time I broke out with that pipe, but I prete/ided to be studying the figures on the wall-paper. Her grielf began gradually to wear off, amd about a month after I'd made the plunge, when I was getting pretty tired of my pipe as steady nicotine diet, she showed a box of good cigars to one, saying : " ' If you must smoke, you might as well smoke cigars as that horrid old pipe that m«k<"s the curtains smell so !' " A few weeks a^o I went away on a business trip. Wiien I eot back she said to me : "'You can't imagine how much I've missed your tobacco smoke in the house in the eveninp-s."'