Every evening, Wilmington daily commercial., 1906-04-30
DEGENERATION IN
TOBACCO TASTE
New York sun.

The tobaCConist nodded IN the direction
Of prosperous looking man who was
just leaving the shop with box under
his arm.
There goes tobacco pevert, or re-
vert. rather. said he. He has reverted
TO stogies, after smoking the best cigars /
going Tor 20 years and more.
His taste in tobacco has undergone /
gradual degeneration, perhaps because |
he has always smoked excessively. Now
his tobacco palate has become SO tangled !
that he wants something rank and acud |
and So he IS become a stogie man.
"When he first began to deal with me
he paid SIS a hundred for his smokes
After a few years he began to complain
to me that his SIS cigars tasted mean To-
him-said they were too sweet and I'M
sipid and that he had ceased to get any
fun out of them.
"He named brand that he had
smoked and liked while up the State ON
a fishing trip. That brand cost IS a
hundred lie began TO smoke them at
the rate OF about 20 n day
"After while he began to tell me that
his IS cigars tasted gummy and gluoy
and that he could smell the wrapping
paste in the smoke Just for the sake
of trying him out / gave him one day
cigar that / sell for 30 cents apiece and
asked him TO let mo know how hc liked 70.
Gle came back the next day and re-
proved me for any iacetiousness IN in
ducing him 90 smoke what he called
putridono. Then knew that his tobacco
taste was gone. and that nothing but the
rank goods was ever going TO satisfy him
again.
81 tried him out ON q perfectly COM
mon and omery brand of Wheeling stogie
and that stogie made an immediate hit
with him Said IL was the toothsOmest
piece of tobacco he'd had in his face for
years from then on he been ordering
! his stogies from me by the thousand.
/ He loves the rancid taste and smell OF the
/ stogies and fairly eats them.
"His Is "a square out-and-out case oi
/ degeneration I'm tobacco taste His over
! indulgence I'm tobacco for a long period
of wears has twisted his tobacco appetite
very much I'm the same manner that some
gourmets and epicuros become, in time
addicted to mouldy checses and abnor-
mally high game.
"His case is by no means unusual Many
| smokers succumb in time TO what they
term the superior joys OF the rankest
imaginable cigars.
Zone of my customers for many years
is the head Of a brokerage concern who,
10 years OF so ago used TO pay $50 a
hundred for about as fine a cigar as comes
out of the Vuelta Abaio district. He,
too. now smokes a stogie that smells like
a fire in a bone fertilizer factory
"a severe attack OF illness, / have
noticed. will often pervert a mans taste
in tobacco. Typhoid fever seems TO have
this effect more than any other ailment.
Several Of my customers, after having
got over attacks of typhoid fever, have
complained to me that their regular
brand Of cigars tasted and smelled
| abominable TO them
R"These have fddled around in such case.
with different brands. generally mildei
ones but. in time, they've all descended
to rank kinds of cigars whereupon they've
expressed their delight and told me that
such cigars have brought to them the old
acute pleasure that they had taken ir
tobacco before falling III.
Senator Depew found his tobacco taste
degenerating nearly 20 years ago. H'
( had been a great smoker OF cigars, con
suminr from 5 20 20 of the best a day
from his early manhood. Then he iounC
that he WASH getting any good out o
his expensive cigars, and be was puzzled
TO fnd-he himself told me-that he wa
: beginning TO extract keen enjoyment
e from the aroma of what he knew to b.
,. rank cigars smoked by other fellows.
D "As an experiment he got a box Of eX
e tremely rank cigars, and he discovers
that he enjoyed them tremendously. Bu
he made up his mind that he was gom
to become an aiiliction TO his friends am
U associates. and so ne decided that rathe
than Weld to what he knew 10 be dc
% generate appetite he would quit smoking
altogether And he did quit-suddenly
y but Tor good and all.
a ssThe fellows who are always maxim
up their minds 10 give up smoking are al
amusing lot. by the way. The very grea
majority of them are always making. "a
s. their minds to quit, and that S all; the
K never get any further
4 Gone of my customers. now n testy oil
n chap. 10 whom we been selling cigar
/, for nearly quarter of q century, ha
Il been swearing every time he came in her
{ for "a box OF his brand during all tina
q time that it was positively to be his las
box.
,r "'When 7 smoke up this box ] II 1
Z through with the Internal weed forever
II he ALWAYS declares, whacking his can
down on the counter. 1T all blame
foolish this smoking business, when yo
begin TO analyze il. and / m going to sto
il. A man that can't control such a
IS idiotic appetite as smoking hasn an
D right to live / d quit right now and nj
n buy this box. but there are some fellow
Al visiting at my house and, Of course, j y
got 10 smoke along with them.
a 'rhe fellow at his house was only on
of his thousand and one excuses.
"Of the men who really do make q
stab at quitting ] should say that abo'
v one In ten really sticks IL out The NH
ID Others baUkslide sooner or later
li "'When ! quit, one of them said
D me not long ago, i bully and hector an
abuse my wife and children and impo
b, upon my employees, and GO mp and dow
Is town every day with q chip on my shou
der. waiting for somebody TO step on nj
, toes SOS can take a try at knocking b
o. block of. and am a nuisance in gener
or 10 myself and TO everybody else. Gimn
oi two boxes of my old brand and gimn
10 em quickl'
s. Il have actually had the wives Of sever
of my periodical quitting customers drl
II in upon me here for the purpose OF asl
s. ing to try to Jolly their husbands ln
beginning to smoke again They've to
me that their men folks we've une
r durable around their homes without the
e smokes. and that there was mo livi
Dr with the tobaccoless ones.
ID "I've got one good customer ma
who smokes both cigars and pipes, an
has got costly little way OF qmtuI
every six months or SO. He gets q b
is of an attack of what is known as hive
q, when his tobacco doesn't taste right
w him, and then, attributing IL to al b