The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-12-21
TOBACCO DEGENERATION.
HOW TASTE IN CIGARS DETERT-
 CRATES.

Best to Craving for Rank, Acrid SmoISe--Overindulge in Smoking Brings About This Result--AbOut One in Ten, Says Washington Dealer, Able to Quit Habit When He Wishes 10.
 There's an increasing number of tobacco perverts in Washington, v said local tobacconist who caters to high class trade. Men whose to- bacco taste has degenerated l mean. There was one of them in here while ago. He has reverted to stogies, after having smoked the best cigars manu- factured for quarter of a century or so.
 It is probably due to the fact that he has always smoked excessively that his taste in tobacco has undergone a gradual degeneration. His tobacco palate has now become so tangled and out of tune that he wants something rank and acrid, and so he's become stogie man. It's the same sort of thing, suppose, as comes to pass with these high liVers who in the end become fond of high game and a whole lot higher cheese.
 When this man hrst began to deal with me he paid SIS a hundred for his cigars. After a few years he began to complain to me that these SIS hun dred cigars tasted mean to him. He said they were too sweet and insipid and that he had ceased to get any fun out of 'em.
 "He named brand that he had smoked and liked while away OH a fishing trip. That brand cost $S a hundred. He began to smoke them at the rate of about twenty a day. After a bit he began to tell me that his $S- a-hundred cigars tasted gummy and gluey, and that he could smell the wrapper paste in the smoke. Just for the sake of trying him out l gave him one day cigar that l sell for 50 cents apiece, and asked him to let me know how he liked it.
 He came back the next day and reproved me for my facetiousness ln inducing him to smoke what he called 9 Putridoro. Then l knew that his to- bacco taste was gone, and that noth- ing but the rank goods was ever go. ing to satisfy him again. l tried hlm out on a perfectly common and ordi- nary brand of Wheeling stogie, and that stogie made an immediate hit with him. Said it was the toothsomest bit of tobacco he had in his face il years and from then on hes been or dering his stogies from me by the thousand. He loves the rancid taste and smell of the stogies, and fairly eats them
 His is g square, out-and-out case of degeneration in tobacco taste. Hi, over-indulgence in tobacco for a long period of years has twisted his tohaccC appetite. His case is by no means un- usual. Men smokers succumb in tim, to what they term the superior joys oi the rankest imaginable cigars
 One of my customers is a partner in Washington brokerage concern who for many years smoked as fine c
  trict. He, too, now smokes stogie that smells like a fire in a bone fertil. izer factory.
 A severe attack of illness, have no ticed, will often pervert a mans taste in tobacco. Typhoid fever seems tc have this effect more than any other Rilment. Several of my customers, af. ter having got over attacks of typhoid fever have complained to me that their regular brand of cigars tasted and smelt abominable to them. These hae fiddled around in such cases witF different brands, generally milder ones but time they've all descended tc rank kinds of cigars, whereupor they've expressed their delight and told me that such cigars have brought back to them the old acute pleasure that they had taken in to- baeco before falling ill
 "One of the most noted Senators found his taste in tobacco degenerat- ing nearly ten years ago. He had beer a great smoker of cigars, consuming from fifteen to twenty of them a day Then he found that he wasn't getting any good out of his expensive cigars and he was puzzled to find-he himselt told me so- that he was beginning tC extract keen enjoyment from tho aroma of what he knew to be rank ci. gars smoked by other men.
 "As an experiment he procured g box of extremely rancid cigars, ant found that he enjoyed smoking then tremendously. But he made up his mind that he wasn't going to become an aff1ction to his friends and asso ciates, and so he decided that rather than yield to what he knew to be de generated appetite he would qui smoking altogether And he did qui suddenly, but for good and all
 "The fellows who are always mak' ing up their minds to stop smoking are an amusing lot, by the way. The very great majority of them are al ways making up their minds to quit and that's all; they never get any further
 "One of my customers now a testy old chap. to whom I've been selling cigars for nearly twenty-five years been swearing every time he came ir here for box of his brand during al that time that it was positively to b' his last box.
 "'When l smoke up this box I'll bt