My Lady Nicotine: A Study in Smoke

Though Scrymgeour only painted in watercolors, I think--I never looked at his pictures--he had one superb idea, which we often advised him to carry out. When he first mentioned...

In a select company of scoffers my brier was known as the Mermaid. The mouth-piece was a cigarette-holder, and months of unwearied practice were required before you found the an...

I was a mere bachelor, drifting toward what I now see to be a tragic middle age. I had become so accustomed to smoke issuing from my mouth that I felt incomplete without it; ind...

I have hinted that Marriot was our sentimental member. He was seldom sentimental until after midnight, and then only when he and I were alone. Why he should have chosen me as th...

Darkness comes, and with it the porter to light our stair gas. He vanishes into his box. Already the inn is so quiet that the tap of a pipe on a window-sill startles all the spa...

Though we all pretended to be glad when Primus went, we spoke of him briefly at times, and I read his letters aloud at our evening meetings. Here is a series of them from my des...

Pettigrew asked me to come to his house one evening and test some tobacco that had been grown in his brother's Devonshire garden. I had so far had no opportunity of judging for...

Scrymgeour was an artist and a man of means, so proud of his profession that he gave all his pictures fancy prices, and so wealthy that he could have bought them. To him I went...

One day, some weeks after we left Scrymgeour's house-boat, I was alone in my rooms, very busy smoking, when William John entered with a telegram. It was from Scrymgeour, and sai...

Scrymgeour had a house-boat called, of course, the _Arcadia_, to which he was so ill-advised as to invite us all at once. He was at that time lying near Cookham, attempting to c...

We continued to visit the _Arcadia_, though only one at a time now, and Gilray, who went most frequently, also remained longest. In other words, he was in love again, and this t...

I charge Gilray's unreasonableness to his ignoble passion for cigarettes; and the story of his flower-pot has therefore an obvious moral. The want of dignity he displayed about...

Primus is my brother's eldest son, and he once spent his Easter holidays with me. I did not want him, nor was he anxious to come, but circumstances were too strong for us, and,...

Gilray is an actor, whose life I may be said to have strangely influenced, for it was I who brought him and the Arcadia Mixture together. After that his coming to live on our st...

This was another of Marriot's perplexities of the heart. He had been on the Continent, and I knew from his face, the moment he returned, that I would have a night of him.

The night of my last smoke drew near without any demonstration on my part or on that of my friends. I noticed that none of them was now comfortable if left alone with me, and I...

Perhaps the heading of this paper will deceive some readers into thinking that I smoke nowadays in camera. It is, I know, a common jest among smokers that such a promise as mine...

When the Arcadians heard that I had signed an agreement to give up smoking they were first incredulous, then sarcastic, then angry. Instead of coming, as usual, to my room, they...

Strictly speaking I never had a brother Henry, and yet I cannot say that Henry was an impostor. He came into existence in a curious way, and I can think of him now without malic...

My dream (said Pettigrew) contrasts sadly with those of my young friends. They dream of revenge, but my dream is tragic. I see my editor writing my obituary notice. This is how...

With the exception of myself, Jimmy Moggridge was no doubt the most silent of the company that met so frequently in my rooms. Just as Marriot's eyebrows rose if the cane chair w...

A few years ago, as some may remember, a startling ghost-paper appeared in the monthly organ of the Society for Haunting Houses. The writer guaranteed the truth of his statement...

On a tiger-skin from the ice-clad regions of the sunless north recline the heroes of Ouida, rose-scented cigars in their mouths; themselves gloriously indolent and disdainful, b...

Though Pettigrew, who is a much more successful journalist than Jimmy, says pointedly of his wife that she encourages his smoking instead of putting an end to it, I happen to kn...

It was not in my chambers, but three hundred miles further north, that I learned to smoke. I think I may say with confidence that a first cigar was never smoked in such circumst...

Had it not been for a bootblack at Charing Cross I should probably never have bought the smoking-table. I had to pass that boy every morning. In vain did I scowl at him, or pass...

"Look here," he cried, changing his tone, "if you don't come out I'll tell you all about it through the keyhole. It is the most extraordinary story, and I can't keep it to mysel...

Those who do not know the Arcadia may have a mixture that their uneducated palate loves, but they are always ready to try other mixtures. The Arcadian, however, will never help...

I see before me (said Jimmy, savagely) a court, where I, James Moggridge, am arraigned on a charge of assaulting the editor of the _St. John's Gazette_ so as to cause death. Lit...

Conceive me (said Gilray, with glowing face) invited to write a criticism of the Critics' Dramatic Society for the _Standard_. I select the _Standard_, because that paper has tr...

I once knew a lady who said of her husband that he looked nice when sitting with a rug over him. My female relatives seemed to have the same opinion of my tobacco-pouch; for the...

I have said that Jimmy spent much of his time in contributing to various leading waste-paper baskets, and that of an evening he was usually to be found prone on my hearth-rug. W...

Sometimes I think it is all a dream, and that I did not really murder the waits. Perhaps they are living still. Yet the scene is very vivid before me, though the affair took pla...