Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-10-21
SMOKING ON THE STREET

A man who observes manifestations of
the streets pretty closely has noticed this
autumn that more men are to be seen
smoking while on parade with women
friends or with their wives than was for
merly the case in Washington. On bright
afternoon last week a dozen or so of men
fairly we'll known hefeabout-men chiefly
of the younger sort, and pretty solid chaps
by no means of the rakish glassware OBJ
served to be smoking cigars they walked
In review on the + street parade in COM
pany with their young women friends
While none of them exhibited sufficient
abandonment to puff at cigarette while
thus In the performance of convoy duty,
yet, now that the opening break appears
to have been made, the simultaneous APP
pearance of the cigarette, the youth and
the girl may reasonably be expected at an
early date. There was a time in Washing
ton when man would no more think OF
walking on the street in company with "A
young woman and a rolled weed projecting
from any corner of his face Than he would
think Of taking an airing on Connecticut
avenue in his shirt sleeves.
lndiscriminate and unapologetic smoking
III the presence of women is a kink of New
York importation. New York, in turn, got
the idea from Europe, In no portion of
which. by the way, are women treated with
one-third the respect that is shown the
sentler sex by the men of the United States
over in big, cheap, tawdry New FORK the
best table d'hotes and hotel cafes for both
sexes have permitted theater-supper smok-
ing for nearly three years past. Far from
protesting against the innovation, the wo-
men of the queer, hybrid town hailed it as
bohemian and the real thing. Some of
the women, whose lives are a perpetual
initiation against 'conventionality, even
undertook to publicly smoke themselves on
their post-theater visits to the high-grade
restaurants with their men friends. The
of fl,a NF.1
cafes, however, did not encourage this. In
tact, they squelched it. They concluded
doubtless with the wisdom of experience,
that the evolution of the conventionality-
battling lazy with the perfumed Turkish
cigarette INTO the highly-elated lady with
the irresistible desire to execute impromptu
dance figures in illustration of the poetry
OF motion might be a trifie too rapid to
conduce to the perfect reputability of their
establishments. So they frowned upon the
woman with the cigarette and informed her
that she must either remain cigaretteless
or totally absent. But, in submission to the
growing demand for that sort of thing
they welcomed the man with the cigar. 1t
followed, then, that the man. having only
smoked about one-half of the cigar in the
restaurant and being loath to throw the
remaining and sweeter half away when
leaving. began to collectively ascertain
If he couldn't make the thing stick of
finishing his smoke on the way home. He
did make 1t stick and from that he took
the next step, a quite natural one, and be-
gan to smoke when promenadng with his
woman friends at high noon in the full
light of day, on the thoroughfares traversed
by people who have time to walk. Plenty of
men, and men supposedly high-class were
smoking cigars while walking with their
women friends at the last Easter Sunday
parade on New Yorks 9TH avenue.
In Washington, capital that of all
American cities Is perhaps the chief con-
server Of public conyentionality at any
rate, the male stroller with a cigar in his
ID !
exactly right Somehow he resembles a
modernized picture out of Bells Life, of
which Thackeray wrote so much and so
derisively. The six-bottle me. of the Bells
Life period smoked church warden pipes
and got themselves drunk and under the
table after dinner with the regularity of
the suns decline and setting. but they had
the grace to herd their women folks into
the drawing and music rooms before they
thus began 10 regale themselves and be
completely joyous.
The other md 10 the question was thus
expressed the other day by young mar
ried pretty well known here who
smokes when in the company of his wife
on the street:
Criticism of a man smoking while walk
ing with woman is the essence of baider-
dash. AT home I smoke in every room in
the house, from basement 10 garnet My
wife likes the smell of cigars. She doesn't
mind my smoking on the street when | am
with her. If she did she'd frankly tell me
so, and Id not do it any more. | don't
mind admitting that if l succeed in pleas
ing her that's all I care. I've got the larg-
est and most completely assorted stock of
Indifference as TO what other folks think
that you ever looked over in your life.
That's the reason l smoke on the street
while my wife's along with me. 1t suits me
and she doesn't object, and for the
world-weli, we've got little world of our
own"
Englishmen of the so-caled best class
smoke br1ar pipes while walking with En-
gilSh women and nothing tp he
thought of it. This does not refer to Ar
ries strolling with their 'Arriets, but to
the kind of Engltshmen who are initiated
by giided youths with receding chins in
this country.
And yet, for all that and all that. the
Washington man putting a cigar while he
walks with woman friend-even, behold
with his wtfe-does not look precisely CON
gruouS.