SMOKING.
First, I ask, do you know—(1), the man who never smokes from the night of the 11th of August up to the night of the 1st of February in the following year, for fear of injuring his sight and his shooting nerve? (2), the host who forbids all smoking amongst the guests assembled at his house for a shooting-party?
You, naturally enough, reply that you have not the honour of being acquainted with these severe, but enthusiastic gentlemen. Nobody does know them. They don't exist. But it is very useful to affect a sort of second-hand knowledge of these Gorgons of the weed, as thus:—
A Party of Guns is walking to the first beat of the day. Time, say about 10·20 A.M.
Young Sportsman (who has a pipe in his mouth, to Second Sportsman, similarly adorned). I always think the after-breakfast smoke is about the best of the day. Somehow, tobacco tastes sweeter then than at any other time of the day.
Second Sp. (puffing vigorously). Yes, it's first class; but I hold with smoke at most times of the day, after breakfast, after lunch, after dinner, and in between.
Young Sp. Well, I don't know. If I try to smoke when I'm actually shooting, I generally find I've got my pipe in the gun side of my mouth. I heard of a man the other day who knocked out three of his best teeth through bringing up his gun sharp, and forgetting he'd got a pipe in his mouth. Poor beggar! he was very plucky about it, I believe; but it made no end of a difference to his pronunciation till he got a new lot shoved in. Just like that old Johnnie in the play—Overland something or other—who lost his false set of teeth on a desert island, and couldn't make any of the other Johnnies understand him.
Second Sp. I've never had any difficulty with my smoking. I always make a habit of carrying my smokes in the left side of my mouth.
Young Sp. Oh, but you're pretty certain to get the smoke or the ashes or something, blown slap into your eyes just as you're going to loose off. No. (With decision.) I'm off my smoke when the popping begins.
Second Sp. Don't be too hard on yourself, my boy. They tell me there are precious few birds in the old planting this year, so you can treat yourself to a cigarette when you get there. It never pays to trample on one's longing for tobacco too much.
Young Sp. No, by Jove. Old Reggie Morris told me of a fellow he met somewhere this year, who goes regularly into training for shooting. Never touches baccy from August to February, and limits his drink to three pints a day, and no whiskeys and sodas. And what's more, he won't let any of his guests smoke when he's got a shoot on, He's got "No Smoking" posted up in big letters in every room in the house. Reggie said it was awful. He had to lock his bedroom door, shove the chest-of-drawers against it, and smoke with his head stuck right up the chimney. He got a peck of soot, one night, right on the top of his nut. Now I call that simple rot.
Second Sp. Ah, I've heard of that man. Never met him though, I'm thankful to say. Let me see what's the beggar's name? Jackson or Barrett, or Pollard, or something like that. He's got a big place somewhere in Suffolk, or Yorkshire, or somewhere about there.
Young Sp. Yes, that's the chap, I fancy.
Now that kind of thing starts you very nicely for the day. It isn't necessary that either of the sportsmen whose dialogue has been reported should believe implicitly in the absolute truth of what he is saying. Observe, neither of them says that he himself met this man. He merely gets conversation out of him on the strength of what someone else has told him. That, you see, is the real trick of the thing. Don't bind yourself to such a story as being part of your own personal experience. Work it in on another man's back. Of course there are exceptions even to this rule. But this question I shall be able to treat at greater length when I come to deal with the important subject of "Shooting Anecdotes."
Very often you can work up quite a nice little conversation on cigarettes. Every man believes, as is well-known, that he possesses the only decent cigarettes in the country. He either—(1), imports them himself from Cairo, or (2), he gets his tobacco straight from a firm of growers somewhere in Syria and makes it into cigarettes himself; or (3), he thinks Egyptian cigarettes are an abomination, and only smokes Russians or Americans; or (4), he knows a man, Backastopoulo by name, somewhere in the Ratcliffe Highway, who has the very best cigarettes you ever tasted. You wouldn't give two-pence a hundred for any others after smoking these, he tells you. And, lastly, there is the man who loathes cigarettes, despises those who smoke them, and never, smokes anything himself except a special kind of cigar ornamented with a sort of red and gold garter.
Out of this conflict of preferences the young shooter can make capital. By flattering everybody in turn, he can practically get his smoking gratis, for everyone will be sure to offer him at least one cigarette, in order to prove the superiority of his own particular kind. And if the young shooter, after smoking it, expresses a proper amount of ecstasy, he is not at all unlikely to have a second offered to him. Most men are generous with cigarettes. Many a man I know would far rather give a beggar a cigarette than a shilling, though the cigarette may have cost, originally, a penny-halfpenny, or more—a strange and paradoxical state of affairs.
Here is a final piece of advice. Admire all cigarette-cases, and say of each that it's the very best and prettiest you ever saw. You can have no notion how much innocent pleasure you will give.
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