"Your cigarette is a sort of hybrid—half-pipe and half-cigar; neither the one nor the other; neither the delight of the epicure nor the solace of the true tobacco-lover. Far be it from us to deny, or even to question, its value, its utility, or its charm. We have smoked too many to dream of treating them with scorn—cigarettes of Virginia shag, strong, pungent, luscious; of light and fragrant Persian, innocuous and soothing; cigarettes rolled by ladies' dainty fingers, compressed by elegant French machines of silk and silver, cut, stamped, and gummed by prosy, matter-of-fact, and even vulgar Titanic engines in great tobacco-factories. But the thorough-paced smoker renders to his cigarette only a secondary and diluted adoration: it is nice, it is delicate, it is pretty—a thing to be toyed with, to be fondled, even to burn one's fingers (or, perchance, one's lips) withal; but by no means an object to call forth a passion.
"But just as the world would be a tame and an insipid institution were all men's tastes alike, so the world of smokers would lose much of its romance were all the lovers of the weed of temperament too robust to love a cigarette. Brevity and sweetness are proverbially held to constitute claims upon the respect and admiration of the voluptuous, and to the cigarette these cannot be denied. There is something touching in the self-abnegation of a tobaccoite who will devote five mortal minutes and the sweat of his refined intelligence, with the skill of his delicate fingers, to the preparation of a tiny capsule of the weed, which burns itself to ashes in five minutes more. There is a butterfly-beauty about the cigarette to which the cigar and the pipe can lay no claim—a summer charm to stir the dreamy rapture of a poet, and to excite the Lotus-eating philosopher even to analogy. Just as the suns, and flowers, and balmy zephyrs of a century have gone to form the gauzy, multi-colored insect that flits across your path throughout a single summer's day, and then returns to dust and vapor, so the harvest of West-Indian and East-Asian fields, the long voyage of the mariner, the merchant's hours of soil, the steam-power and manual labor of the factory, the thoughtful calculations of the trader, the skill of the tissue-paper maker, all have gone, and more than these, to the creation of a fairy-cylinder of Tobacco, which glows, delights, expires, and meets its end in ten or fifteen fleeting minutes."
Although the cigarette is not a favorite with us, still we admire its use as a sort of appendage to a good dinner, and as preparatory work for a "good smoke." The Spaniards have always been great lovers of their minute rolls, and with them, no other method of burning tobacco appears so delicate or refined. Especially is this true among the ladies, who prefer "Seville cigarettes" to all others. Many smokers make their own cigarettes, sometimes using Havana tobacco, and sometimes making them of two or more kinds. An excellent cigar is made by using equal parts of Virginia and Perique tobacco, or equal parts of Havana and Perique. A fine flavored cigarette is also made from Yara and Havana tobacco, equal parts of each being used. Thos. Hood has signalized his attachment to cigar in the following pleasing little poem:—
THE CIGAR.
"Some sigh for this and that,
My wishes don't go far;
The world may wag at will,
So I have my cigar.
"Some fret themselves to death
With Whig and Tory jar;
I don't care which is in,
So I have my cigar.
"Sir John requests my vote,
And so does Mr. Marr;
I don't care how it does,
So I have my cigar.
"Some want a German row,
Some wish a Russian war;
I care not. I'm at peace,
So I have my cigar.
"I never see the Post,
I seldom read the Star;
The Globe I scarcely heed,
So I have my cigar.
"Honors have come to men
My juniors at the Bar;
No matter—I can wait,
So I have my cigar.