SMOKING
"Have a cigar?"
"No—don't smoke now."
"Sworn off?"
"Nope; stopped entirely."
"Your wife doesn't kick about your smoking up the curtains."
"Nope, she can't have both curtains and coupons."
It was on a passenger train. The conductor in passing through observed a man with a cigar in his mouth. "Hey, you can't smoke in here," he bawled out.
"I'm not smoking," quietly replied the passenger.
"Well, you've got a cigar in your face," shot back the conductor.
"Suppose I have," continued the other good naturedly. "I've got feet in my shoes and I'm not walking."
Mark Twain: A Pipe Dream
Well I recall how first I met
Mark Twain—an infant barely three
Rolling a tiny cigarette
While cooing on his nurse's knee.
Since then in every sort of place
I've met with Mark and heard him joke,
Yet how can I describe his face?
I never saw it for the smoke.
At school he won a smokership,
At Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.)
His name was soon on every lip,
They made him "smoker" of his class.
Who will forget his smoking bout
With Mount Vesuvius—our cheers—
When Mount Vesuvius went out
And didn't smoke again for years?
The news was flashed to England's King,
Who begged Mark Twain to come and stay,
Offered his dukedoms—anything
To smoke the London fog away.
But Mark was firm. "I bow," said he,
"To no imperial command,
No ducal coronet for me,
My smoke is for my native land!"
For Mark there waits a brighter crown!
When Peter comes his card to read—
He'll take the sign "No smoking" down,
Then Heaven will be Heaven indeed.
—Oliver Herford.