"THE DEADLY CIGARETTE."
Have you heard the Yankee threat to suppress the Cigarette?
Ten dollars tax per thousand—as the French would say, par mille—
Is the scheme proposed, forsooth, to protect the Yankee youth
From poisons just discovered in his papier pur fil!
Such things might well have been in staring emerald green,
Or even in the paler tint that's christened "Eau-de-Nil,"
But it simply makes one sick to imagine arsenic
Is lurking in the spotless white of papier pur fil!
Strange the smoking French survive! Surely none should be alive;
Fair France should be one mighty morgue from Biarritz to Lille,
If there's also phosphorus, bringing deadly loss for us,
In Hygiene's new victim, luckless papier pur fil.
Yet some Frenchmen live to tell they are feeling pretty well;
From dozing Concierge at home to marching Garde Mobile,
You might safely bet your boots that, with loud derisive hoots,
They'd scout the thought of poison in their papier pur fil.
Then how foolish to conclude that, because they hurt the dude,
Smoking all day in the country, half the night as well en ville,
After dinner Cigarettes, two or three, mean paying debts
Of nature, or mean going mad, from papier pur fil!