XIV

JOHN E. Owens made a great hit with his popular play “The Live Indian,” in which he took down and hid a stunning figure, that had stood many years before a cigar store, in fact considered to be one of “the oldest inhabitants.”

Made up as an exact counterpart of this, he mounted the pedestal and waited until midnight, when he broke into the store, and hastened away, rich in booty; not leaving, however, till he had replaced the insulted Indian in his rightful place.

This was an irresistibly comical sight. But the wooden Indian must go; his death knell has been rung. In the old days, a cigar store without this symbol, would be as lacking in life as a one ring Circus at the present time. All has changed: you can walk street after street in any city, and pass tobacco stores by the score but your old friend is not there. Tobacco sales are now managed by advertisements and gaudy lithographs of chorus girls smoking cigarettes, or fancy pictures just to catch the eye. These are the new favorites and soon the Indian Sign will be obsolete; a relic of the ages.

This fact suggested making a collection to preserve his memory.

I fancy I hear some one say, “This seems to end rather abruptly.” That is true; but just as Horace Greeley said, “The way to resume is to resume,” I think the way to stop is to stop. And it is a triumph of self control in a woman to stop short when she really has nothing more to communicate.

I hope that this little historic Souvenir, will be desired by every man who smokes and every woman who “loves the odor of a good cigar.” Like Col. Sellers, I have prepared a bottle for each eye.

And now in a whisper let me close with a treasonable quotation from Kipling:

“A woman’s only a woman—but a good cigar is a smoke!”

A Poseur
A Jolly Party
Lady Enjoying the Weed
“And Last of All an Admiral Came”