Smokeress

But no sooner have we actually arrived at a station and debouched on its platform, and some nice old dear of a pater-familias-looking gentleman has got his tobacco roll alight,—than up comes our determined smokeress, and looks at him as innocent as a newborn babe; so of course he instantly becomes self-convicted of a solecism, and with floundering apologies humbly offers her a light; and she takes it too; but then, as she can only persuade her own aromatic leaf to ignite thoroughly while he is pulling away with all his lungs at his, why there necessarily ensues a most piquant tête-à-tête, as they look intensely for a minute or so right into each other’s countenances, at only the length of two cigars apart and the glowing little spark between.

The Journal of Education, of Ohio (date unknown), informs us that in one of the schools of that state, consisting of five-and-thirty boys and girls, there are nine little boys who quid, and five little girls who smoke tobacco. The Journal seems annoyed by that statistical fact. ‘We say nothing about the quidding,’ it wails aloud; ‘but when we think of the smokeresses, we almost fancy ourselves at the Sandwich Islands.’

The procession led off with a party of the king’s smokeresses, and after they had blown a cloud a troop of girls carrying long fetiche affairs like iron palm-leaves preceded the black jars.

It seems that the old lady is now such a confirmed smokeress (ha! ha! […]

A certain percentage of the fair sex smoke also, all the way from dainty little feminine cigarettes up to cigars, though the Russians declare that all the “smokeresses” are either Finns or Poles.

I cannot say that very young girls appear to indulge much, though women of all ages do to a great extent, inhaling the smoke and puffing it through the nose in thick clouds. […] The bowl of either kind is so tiny that it will only hold a pinch or two of very fine tobacco, which three or four whiffs consume, when it has to be refilled and lighted from a slow-match held ready in the hand until the smokeress has smoked enough.

The smokeress of the cantina wears vol de nuit for me I love / Her high voices gravely wine assigns sky to become itself / I tier pipes and parma violets up into a friend and trumpet honor / Parts with me into the battle its heart presses my heart that it fights / They sleep all night wondering but star-filled whose they are / […]