towns; because, supposing its price reduced to
the lowest rate possible, it would still be twice
as dear as gas.

CIGARS.

TAKE a cigar? I can recommend them, for I
know all about them. No lettuce-leaf or
common German tobacco there—real Havannah, I
assure you. How can I make sure of that?
How do I know what's inside? Light that
cigar, take a whiff or two, and tell me how you
like the brand, and then I'll tell you how I can
swear to what's inside. Don't be a Visigoth;
don't bite off the end as if it were a thistle and
you were a—— There, take it up tenderly—
so—pierce it with your penknife gently, as if
you loved it, as you will presently, I doubt not.
Stop, stop; it's not a torch to be lighted like
that with a wisp of tea-paper! I will give
you a cedar spill. Let the end court the flame
timidly, dally with it, sport with it, kiss it and
run away, like a coy lover. That's the way.
But don't draw at it as if you were a pump.
Gently. So. Now how do you like it? "Very
delicate flavour indeed; but wants—wants
age." Very good; now I will tell you how I
know what's inside that cigar. I saw it made.
Saw it made! then it's not foreign? Foreign,
no; it's of British manufacture, and you are
perfectly right as to its wanting age, for that
cigar was made exactly ten days ago. And it
may increase your appreciation of it to know
that it was rolled up by a very pretty girl. A
girl? Yes, a girl, sweet sixteen, golden hair,
blue eyes, and a figure perfectly sylph-like. In
mythological times they would have decreed her
apotheosis as the Goddess of Tobacco, with a
bundle of Havannah leaves on her head to match
Ceres with her sheaf. She had beautiful white
hands with taper fingers, and with those delicate
little fingers she neatly rolled up the end of that
cigar which you were going to bite off like a
cannibal. You ought to have kissed it rather.
What do you think of the cigar now? Having
no romance in your composition, and no
knowledge of tobacco, you are beginning to have a
poor opinion of it, because I told you it was
British. If you had bought that cigar at a shop
and paid sixpence for it, you would have been
quite satisfied that it was a real foreign
Havannah. Do you know what a retailer of the
"finest foreign brands" lately said to me? If
the fools were all dead, there would be no
getting a living out of cigars.

I have learned to understand this saying
within the last few days, and also to comprehend
many things with regard to the great tobacco
economy, of which, though a smoker, I have
hitherto been ignorant.

This was how I stumbled upon my knowledge.
I was dining one day in the magnificent banqueting
hall of the Washington Hotel, at Liverpool.
After dinner, one of the company (who had made
me laugh very much by his quaint and dry
humour, contrary to the rules of etiquette, when
my mouth was full) handed me his cigar-case, and
politely asked me to help myself. I did so, and was
pleased with the cigar. Was it foreign? No; it
was his own make. Indeed! The flavour was
really very fine. As I liked them so much, perhaps
I would call in at the manufactory in the morning,
and he would give me a few of that brand
to smoke—in defiance of the railway bye-laws—
on my way home. In accordance with this kind
invitation, I called next morning in Lord
Nelson-street. I expected a shop. I found a huge
factory. I had derived my ideas of cigar
manufacture from certain dingy cribs at the East-end
of London, where I had seen a dozen men and
boys at work, ostentatiously in a low window,
that the passing public might convince
themselves there was no lettuce. But here was what
might be called an emporium. An imposing
double door, with plate glass and brass entablatures,
like a bank. Entering these gates, the scent
of tobacco is wafted upon my olfactories like the
odour of newly-mown hay. Persons who use
the horrible mundungus which is commonly sold
for tobacco, have no idea of the sweet and
grateful odour of the real article. It is, indeed,
provokingly suggestive of something nice to
eat—slightly, I fancy, of Everton toffee fresh
from the oven.

Through the inner door into a large counting-
house, where many clean clerks are filling up
day-books and journals and ledgers with the
record of transactions in dried leaves, whose end
is smoke and ashes. The sight of so many
cigar-boxes about a counting-house strikes me
as being somewhat unbusiness-like, until I
remember that cigars are the stock-in-trade. My
friend, the proprietor, advances with a cordial
greeting, a facetious remark—which nearly
causes one of the clean clerks to roll off his high
stool—and a small bundle of the British brand
which I was gracious enough to approve.

"There, that'll do to break the bye-laws with,
and suffocate all the old ladies on the road home.
There's a forty-shilling fine in every one of them,
if you only manage matters properly. By-the-
by, you might like to look over our little
place?"

I said I should like it much.

"Very good; I am at your service for an
hour. Let me see; what shall I show you
first? Ah, I think we'd better go to the root
of the evil to begin with."

So we go down stairs to the root of the
evil; that is to say, the cellars in which the raw
material is stored. There I see many
hogsheads and many bales and bunches of tobacco-
leaves, from all parts of the earth: from the
West Indies and the East, from the Southern
States of America, from Turkey, Holland,
Austria, Paraguay, Algeria, Java, Hungary,
Greece, and many other countries. I am
informed that there are no less than sixty different
growths of tobacco. The difference in the
quality and value is very great. The value of
this German leaf, for example, is eightpence a
pound, that of yonder choice Havannah nine
shillings; which explains the difference in