Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1891-05-16
The Smoke Nuisance.

From the Boston Transcript.
What is one mans meat is another mans
poison, and SO what is q severe trial to one
may be supreme enjoyment to another. II
must be SO, else why should men go about the
streets Of a city putting their tobacco smoke
into the faces of suffering, non-fumiferous hui
mainly, to the disgust of its nostrils and the
despair of its lungs?
1t is not conducive to comfort, especially il
one happen to be lady, to walk for several
blocks perhaps. behind one OF these nuisances.
On the contrary, it is martyrdem without the
compensatory equivalent of knowing that one
has been true to ONE principles. Were one to
be guided by ones principles in this regard,
one would say something unpleasant to the
offender, perhaps do something that should
do" for him.
But still the evil goes on, and 80 used have we
become to it that We breathe in the smoke
which is passed on to US after the producer has
got through with it with hardly a murmur.
with scarcely thought. Even to the smoker
smoke at second hand is not agreeable Then
how obnoxious must it be to the contemner OF
tobacco smoke and of tobacco!
Ihoughtless man, know you not that each
puff OF smoke which you SO jauntily fling to
the breeze is waited into the face of the fair
one, to whose native sweetness is added the
costlest of merchantable perfumery, and to
whom, therefore, the hot, sitting, stenchy breath
OF your cigar, your pipe, or possibly of your
cigarette is all the more hateful by reason OF
comparison and Of contrast?
And even if one be OF the sterper and less
sensitive sex, it is not pleasant to exchange at
mospheric air for the products OF the imper-
feet combustion Of very imperfect cigar, I'M
less ones lungs be anomalous or eccentric in
their taste; and surely it is not agreeable upon
opening ones mouth to speak to have it filled
with tobacco smoke.
There are cigars and CIGARS and the smoke
vrt, rnh T.o e.
adapted for breathing as the air which was
originally provided for that purpose. But there
are also cigars whose odor Is atrocious, and
which are smoked with the same freedom as if
they were of the finest brand. The pipe, too,
is not too modest to seek the solitude which
best becomes it. The pipe, too, faunts itseli
on the public street, and exhales its acrid vapor
with impartial liberality. And still worse-a
thousand times worse-the cigarette, with it,
stimulation OF burning marsh hay; the ciga-
rette, whose fumes are not only worse in
quality but which are also all out Of proportion
in volume to the size of their source; the ciga-
rette, the vealy, immature cigar, the despair of
the adult and the hope Of the adolescent;-eyep
the cigarette has the hardihood to breathe out
its pestiientiai efhuvium without remorse with
out shame even.
And not alone is the smoking habit trial 10
pedestrians who are not its victims save vica-
riously. but the smoke Of the smoker follows
or rather precedes one in the public convey
ances and in places Of public resort True,
smoking is not permitted in our street cars, but
when a dozen men who have but lust relin.
pushed their cigars enter a car they might al.
most as well be smoking, and it were far better
that all twelve should puff away like mad than
that one of their number should, al is often the
case, hold his cigar in his hand and allow it to
shoulder and to st-smell.
The man who smokes is o nuisance. When
he Ia not smoking his clothing is an exbalen,
reminiscence of past fumigatiOns, He eoison,
the air wherever he goes. He it is who is re,
| sponsible for one of the greatest of city trials
Without him, spite of all other trials, the city
would not be bad place to live In.