"Light, Sir."
"''Ere y'are, sir—pipe-light, cigar-light, on'y 'ap'ny a box—'ave a light, sir.' Every smoker of the larger cities knows the cry. Every tender-hearted smoker is familiar with the appeal, by day and by night, and remembers pangs of regret he has felt when the want of ha'pence or the repletion of his match-box has prevented his much-besought response. There is no need now to enlarge upon the sufferings, the adventures, the dangers of these peripatetic juvenile trades folk, sparse of clothes and food, and full of the material which may make or mar a nation; for all this was done, and even overdone, by the graphic sensationalists of the London penny dailies when Chancellor Lowe proposed a tax on matches. We may, upon occasion, feel for the manufacturers and venders of 'lights,' but more generally we find ourselves constrained to sympathize with the purchasers of such contrivances for the ignition of pipes and cigars. The smoking of tobacco is an art; an art which, in its proper exercise, requires much care, much prudence, and not a little skill. This is a proposition which must, from its very nature, be startling to non-smokers, and surprising to many smokers. The tobacco hater (invariably an illogical creature, who hates that which he knows not) will hold up hands in amazement, and sniff with the nose in contempt, to whom reply would be superfluous.
"With the smoker the case is otherwise. A German writer recently said that the English were better smokers than the Germans; because, whereas the German smoked incessantly, without rule, system, or moderation, the English smoked with care, with slow and appreciative lovingness, and the determination not to overstep the bounds of rational enjoyment. Had he known more of English smokers, he would not have made so wild a statement; and had he known English women better, he would never have attributed to their sweet influence the fancied superiority he describes in English as compared with German smoking. In truth, the art of tobacco using is nowhere more ignored, nowhere more contemptuously neglected than in these 'favored isles.' For one man who smokes with a reason, for a purpose, or by system, you shall find a thousand who smoke without either; and the result is that those who smoke have little defense, in the general way, for their practice, while those who condemn the habit have far better grounds for their opposition than they have ever yet been able to explain. To those who do know why they use tobacco, it is well-nigh incredible that so many of their fellow-smokers should be ignorant of the properties, the uses, the abuses, of the weed they burn and the fumes in which they delight. Yet, even this is not so surprising as the fact that so few of those who smoke—smoke much, often and constantly—should be ignorant of, or indifferent to, the conditions which are necessary to their own adequate enjoyment of the weed.
"You will see a man light a cigar so carelessly that one side of the roll will burn rapidly, with prodigious fumigation and giving out a dark and offensive cloud, while the other side remains untouched by the fire, only to wither and crackle and twist into uncouth shapes, until the smoker flings the cigar away, with an accompaniment of expletives which attach rather to his own stupidity than to the piece of tobacco he has so abominably abused. You will see another with a good pipe, laden with good tobacco, well lit, blowing incessantly down the mouth-piece and the stem until the moisture introduced with his breath into the bowl of his pipe effectually prevents the tobacco from burning, and puts out the fire; and then you will hear him lament that he should have paid so good a price for a pipe so bad that it 'fouls' before he has smoked a single hour. You will see another who, while he talks to his friends, allows his tobacco to go out every three or four minutes, so that at length his mouth is sore and his palate nauseated with the combined fumes of lucifer matches, burnt paper and exhausted tobacco dust; and he inveighs against the 'cabbage-leaf which that rascally tobacconist sold him for good Shag or Cavendish.' Another knows so little of the art of smoking that he never 'stops' his pipe, and so allows the light dust of the burnt weed to fly about him in flakes and minute particles, to the permanent damage of his own and his neighbors' clothes. But in nothing is the inartistic character of English smoking so conspicuously exemplified as in the use of 'lights.' Those who form the great majority of smokers amongst the English-speaking races seem to consider that, so long as their pipes are set alight, it matters not how or from what source the light is obtained. Thus, one will place his pipe-bowl in a flame of gas, and pull away at the stem till his tobacco is on fire; another will thrust the bowl into the midst of a coal fire, and when he sees a glow in the bowl withdraw it, and contentedly puff away; another stops an obliging policeman or railway guard, and ignites his tobacco by hard pulling at the flame of an oil-lamp; another will stick the end of a choice cigar into the bowl of a pipe filled with coarsest Shag, thus ruining the flavor of his 'prime Havana' forever; while yet another will light lucifer matches, and apply the blazing brimstone to his pipe or cigar, thus saturating the whole mass with sulphurous and phosphoretic fumes, to the ruin of the weed and the injury of his own health.
"How much wiser the West Indian negro, who takes a burning stick from the wood fire, and tenderly lights his weed therewith, or joyfully brings a handful of the white-hot ashes in his thick-skinned palm, that 'massa' may fire his cigar! Or the travelling peddler or tinker, who, as he sits by the way-side, patiently wooes the sun with a 'burning-glass' till his tobacco ignites, or uses with equal prudence and skill the ancient but inimitable tinder-box.
Bringing a Light.
"But this is the age of Fusees. What a name! When, in our youth, those longitudinal strips of tinder, semi-divided into innumerable transverse slips, all tipped with harmless, ignitable matter, first assumed the title, we had little notion of the atrocities which would come to be dignified by their name. This was soon after the world had been delighted by the Congreves, which drove Lucifer to the wall, and before English and German ingenuity had taught us to find 'death' in the box, as well as 'the pot.' The innocent old fusee had his faults, certainly. He would not always light; he had a bad habit of turning back on your finger-nail and burning its quick when you struck him; and he would occasionally light up, all by himself, and set fire to fifty of his fellows in your waist-coast pocket, or the tail of your best dress-coat. (Those were the days when waist-coats were gorgeous and tail-coats immense.) But what were these peccadilloes compared with the sins of the modern 'cigar-light?' 'Fusees,' forsooth! More like bomb-shells, military mines, torpedoes, and nitroglycerine trains. Who has not had them explode in his eye, on his cheek, down his neck, scarring his skin, burning holes in his coats and trousers, frightening passers-by, and doing all manner of deep-dyed devilment? Nor is this the worst. Those who will trust their skins, and their eyes, and their clothes to 'Vesuvians,' 'Flamers,' and the like, are not to be pitied; for they are more cruel to their tobacco than the fusees are to them. Our grievance is that so many engines of destructiveness and offensiveness should be so largely patronized by smokers, to their own discomfort, the ruination of their tobacco, the scandalization of gentle and simple, and the encouragement of vicious manufactures. Now, we are not going to particularize too closely, for fear of consequences. In these days, when a man may bring an action for libel because it has been said of him that he sells bad soup at a railway station, prudence is the better part of valor. But, just examine this heterogeneous pile of 'cigar-lights,' which rears its audacious head upon the table. Here are Palmers, Barbers, Farmers, Lord Lornes, Tichbornes, Bryants and Moys, Bells and Blacks, Alexandres, Bismarcks, King Williams, Napoleons, and scores of other varieties. Some light 'only on the box,' some light anywhere, some everywhere, and some nowhere. Some are on wood, some on porcelain, some on glass, some on dire deeds intent. There are vestas, safety-matches, patent flint-and-steel contrivances, with silver tubes and marvellous screws wherewith to put them out when they have served your turn. Some are excellent, many passable, still more intolerable. One of these times it may be worth while to speak of the good ones, but at present we care only to treat of those that are bad, and that briefly.
"Here's a 'Flamer'—we name no names—everybody seems to make flamers; and this one deserves his title. We want to light a peaceful pipe, and he bursts out in a fury like unto nothing on earth so much as Etna in convulsion, or the Tuilleries in petroleum blaze. But, if you have any respect for your tobacco, your lips, your nostrils, or your lungs, you will let him get rid of his flames before you apply him to your cigar; and, when you do venture so far, he drops off the stick and burns a hole in the carpet. Or, if you be daring enough to take a light from the flamer while he flames, you spoil your tobacco, foul your mouth, and get a taste of sulphur-suffocation such as Asmodeus might have were he to take a whiff of a smoke-and-fire belching chimney in the Black Country as he flies across that district by night. Haven't got a light? Glad of it. Try a Vesuvian-round, black and tipped with blue. There's a pyrotechnic display for you! Now, in with it, after the approved style illustrated by the two human hands engaged in lighting a cigar on the illuminated cover of the box. 'Ugh!' you say. Just so; you've got a mouthful of choice abominations, which will cost you much waste of saliva, several shivers, and the whole piece of tobacco you were about to enjoy. Here, put that away; take another, light it quietly with this wax-vesta, or this wooden 'spill,' or this screw of paper; smoke gently, don't let the fire out, and you'll be all right. In future, you may be wise enough to avoid cheap cigar-lights and pipe-lights, even for use in the streets. Our word upon it—they are far dearer than those which cost more."