The following description of "Home Made Cigars" is from All the Year Round, and will doubtless be read with interest by many growers of the weed who may recall similar scenes:
"'Apropos of cigars,' said Wilkins, lighting a second fragrant Havana with the stump of the first, 'let's go and see the farmer's establishment for making them. You see that field of tobacco over yonder? Old Standish raises his own weed, dries it in the big open sheds behind the barn, cures it—I don't quite know the whole process—and then has it made into sixes and short fives, Conchas and Cabanas, like a Cuban señor. I went over the establishment about a year ago, and it is worth seeing.'
"We strolled first over to the tobacco field. The weed was then just at its full ripeness, and the long, flappy, delicately-furred green leaves bent gracefully over toward the ground, growing smaller and smaller the higher they were on the stout stalk. Few foreigners know that even as far north as New England, in the sunny valleys of Connecticut, sheltered as they are from the bleak east winds of the Atlantic and accustomed to a long and steady summer heat, tobacco is grown in large quantities, flourishes exuberantly, and is one of the chief sources of profit to the farmers. It needs a rich warm soil and careful tending; but it gives in its growth, a sentimental reward to the cultivator; for it comes up gracefully, rapidly, and beautifully, and is with some care, one of the most satisfactory crops to 'handle.' Having gazed at and tasted the thick leaves, we sauntered behind the barn, and there saw the long open shed, with beams running parallel from end to end, where the gathered tobacco leaves were hung to be thoroughly dried by the sun.
Making Cigars.
"Then Wilkins conducted us for some distance along the river bank; we jumped into a boat and rowed perhaps half a mile, landing by the side of a little shop-like building, where we heard the hum of voices and the commotion of many busy persons. We entered and found ourselves in a long, low room, having wide tables ranged along the walls; here, working rapidly, were rows of chatty country girls, who, as they worked, laughed and talked, and now and then hummed a verse of some familiar ballad. Neatly packed piles of the dried and cured leaf lay upon the table before them.
"Each was armed with knives and cutters, and we watched the quick transformation of the flat leaves into the smooth and compact cigars. The tobacco grown upon the farm was, we discovered, only used as wrappers for the cigars. The good farmer imported, for the interior filling, a fine tobacco from Havana. Strips and little pieces of this the girls placed in the centre of the cigar, wrapping the Connecticut tobacco in wide strips tightly about it, then pasting each of the last with some paste in a pot by their side. It seemed to be done almost in an instant; the Havana slips were laid down, cut and trimmed, and pressed into shape in a twinkling; the wrappers were cut as quickly; and, more rapidly than I can describe it, the cigar was made. These girls were mostly daughters of neighboring farmers, who received so much per hundred cigars made; intelligent, bright-eyed and witty; many of them comely, with rosy cheeks and ruddy health; educated at the common schools, and able, their day's work over, to sit down at the piano and rattle away ad infinitum.
"His stock of cigars thus made up, from the first sowing to the last finishing touch, the good squire (being Yankee-like, a sort of Jack-of-all-trades,) would have them put up in gorgeously labeled boxes, carry them to town, and sell them to retail dealers; not disdaining himself, twice or thrice a year, to go through the neighboring States with samples, and acting as his own commercial traveler."
This description, however, may not convey a correct idea of the exact mode of manufacture to many growers of tobacco in the Connecticut Valley inasmuch as many planters of the "weed" make the entire cigar (more particularly for their own use) wrapper, binder and filler wholly of seed-leaf tobacco, such cigars do not readily sell to the trade except at inferior prices which admit of but a small profit to the manufacturer. The following spicy article from the "London Figaro" may be interesting to all smokers as well as guide them in the selection of a good cigar.