New York's Special Provision for Women Smokers New York, Dec. 7.
New York now has a shop which caters strictly to the feminine tobacco. trade. The proprietors, in announcing that they were following the lead of London and Paris, declared there had not been a place in the city where women could lounge and smoke without buying a meal.—Reuter.
They used to have shops where women could enjoy their food without being asphyxiated by tobacco fumes. They used to have exclusive restaurants where women could eat without listening to the gurgle of beer. Modistes used to gown \women in sacred sanctuaries where no man was allowed to set foot even momentarily. But those were in the days of yore when women had. wasp-waists and sat on_horsehair sofas and spoke of Mother Grundy respectfully.
But today times have changed and sophistication demands a speciality shop For the purpose catering to the nicotine wants of women, What ramifications and versatility of the trade present themselves to the imagination. A beautiful shop it must be, dressed jin colours that please the eye and soothe the senses and with service that is soft of foot and dainty of dress. Tired working women will come in for a half hour's lounge to rest and smoke the satisfying weed. There will be long and strong cigarettes for heavier moods and for the newest of the new women. There will be dainty slim ones for the less hardy devotee. And what a resort for the girl whose disapproving parents have not progressed with her along the path of the free and independent woman.
Perhaps a speciality in colouring of cigarette paper will be developed, white paper for morning, red for the evening—paper to match the hair, the complexion, the dresse—, black ones for the sadhearted, blue ones for the love-lorn.
What a future for that slim form, the cigarette, which lives so short a while and only dies to please. There may be also such a future for the old briar-pipe, who knows?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.