Oh fie cigarette Oh sly cigarette Why do you teach me to love you so When I have to pretend that I don't, you know The charming young ladies of "The Runaway Girl" who used to carol this touching ditty, while reclining in various graceful attitudes about the Gaiety stage—it is curious now to remember that there was a time when "nice" girls did not smoke—might be interested and flattered to learn why, physiologically, the cigarette appealed to them so strongly. It is only recently that the writer learnt from a doctor that a cigarette is not so much a narcotic as a stimulant. As we understand it, it dilates the blood vessels of the brain, more quickly than any other kind of tobacco and thus so to speak speeds up the machinery. hence the common experience of many workers that when stuck over some knotty point a few whiffs of a cigarette will help them through. From which arises an interesting problem. From the} vast number of cigarettes consumed are we to deduce that all the consumers are engaged in intricate mental effort, or that the constant cigarette is a ceaseless effort to find brains to stimulate.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.