The St. Johns herald., 1894-05-10
FEMININE SMOKERS.
A Practice That Is Growing in Ia.
 vor with the Fair Sex.
Royal Russian Women Who are Very Fond ot Their Ciearettes-A Peculiar
 Custom of KaIsnuck Mothers Smoking Infants.

OH dDOUG WOuuCu the columns of the North American Review and other periodicals, and those who broke lances for and against were women. Mrs Lynn Lynton, whose novels are read here as feuille- tons so extensively and with so much gusto, is quoted as leading the assault against the lady smokers. Is it true that she calls the cigarette when in a 1ady's mouth tLe emblem of revolt? If so, she is not up to date. so far as continental practices go. The cigar cite has not yet found its way with after-dinner coffee into the official drawing-room, but it soon will. At all the houses setting up to style it is served at intimate dejeuners and small but lively dinners.
 Nobody is shocked at ladies smoking not merely yonecigarette apiece but two or three. 4 minister of Queen Christina says that highly respectable and respec- tedroyal lady is saninveterate and a vet eran smoker. She got n the habit of smoking a cigarette when she was ab- Jess of the Hradschin, q sinecure she. lost on getting married. Her cousin, Archduchess Mathilde, who was en- gagged to King Humbcrt when he was prince of Savoy, lost her life owing to her fondness for cigarettes. She was forbidden by her father, Archdulse Albert, to smoke. but none the less went on doing so. One sjimmer's day, preventing, as she was standing smoking on the balcony she saw him enter the courtyard on which she was looking down. The archduchess, who was wearing muslin dress, whipped the cigarette out of her mouth and hid it behind her back. It came in contact with the muslin, and she was in mo- ment envelopcd in flames, there being a strong draught where she stood.
 Most of the Russian grand duch- esses are smokers. Grand Duchess Wlademir thinks husband and wife who smoke are less likely to fall out than if the former alone smoked. It is not known whether the queen of Italy smokes, but some of her ladies cer- tainly do. When I was at Stresa I saw them enjoying cigarettes when boating on the lake, and in the grounds of the duchess of Genoa's villa, where the queen was staying. The crown prin- cess of axe-Meiningen could not live without her cigarette. 1t neither takes from hc- good looks, nor spells her teeth, nor diminishes her activity. She is nearly thirty-four, but appears scarcely twenty-six. The Infanta Eulalia spoke when she was last on the Riviera of the comtesse de Paris as having set her an example as smoker. AS the French say, the infanta beau coup d'imagination, and saw in the cigarette or cigar of the comteSse a pipe which she believed that royal lady smoked in the streets of Seville. Span ish ladies are gratuitously credited or diseredited with being great smokers. They may do so in Cuba, though they are there more conservative and greater sticklers for the proprieties than at Madrid The ladies who best patronize tobacconists are, next to the Kalmucks, the Russians. The ruling passions of Kalmuclx women are ribbons to twist round their long tresses, tea, tobacco, and bright handkerchiefs. But if they have to choose between tobacco and tea their option is for the former.
 When a little Kalmuck comes into the world-an event that happens rarely twice in the same menage, the mamma is given well-filled pipe to smoke before she nurses the baby l The little ore takes to smoking before | it is weaned. The pipe is the great l cure for nervous headache. Fredens- | borg, where the czar and czarina sum- mer, is the dullest place in the world. | ~f Sc of respect for the proprieties. The last charge that anyone could think of | bringing against her court is that of | fast behavior. Yet most of the young | and youngish ladies there are smokers. | There is no better way of showing of | pretty hands and rings than toying with a cigarette. A court party from Fredensborg one evening was dining at the Copenhagen Trivoli in the col onnade of the restaurant. There was a large threatrical party near them; the actresses did not smoke, but the ladies in attendance and those whom they attended did. Some of the fair smokers were Russians, and not in the least inclined to unfurl the flag of re- volt. That evening it was learned that the crown princess of Sa1e-MeiH ingen is not the only granddaughter of Queen Victoria who finds solace in the cigarette. Why should not a princess use it, as an old Irish woman uses the pipe to take the edge off ner- vousness? The only harm is in the abuse. But there is no good thing under the sun that is not mischievous If taken in excess. There is no more harm in mild smoking than iD mild tea drinking. George Sand, who lived to the age of seventy-three and was so active and hard-working to the end, smoked cigarettes and cigars-and in excess. The smoke curling before her eyes reused up her imagination. Victor Hugo hated smoking.
 Fir Stronger Than Oak.
 It would be difficult, says the St.