Women smokers are now studying the art of holding a cigarette gracefully, say the Home papers dated in April, in anticipation of a competition to be included: among the attractions at the Tobacco Fair, billed for the HorticuTtural Hall on April 30.
The prize will be awarded the girl who smokes her cigarette the most graceful manner at afternoon tea.
The idea is certainly full of possibilities, and the ladies devoted to my Lady Nicotine are wondering whether they will be required to master such eagerly-sought-after accomplishments as blowing smoke rings, or passing the smoke through the nose To hold a cup of tea in one hand and delicately poise a cigarette in the other is a feat fraught with difficulties even for the most experienced woman smoker.
As an inducement to, enter the competition, the organizers have promised to provide cigarettes, and to present a souvenir to every woman entrant.
The contest will doubtless be carried out on different lines from a contest described in Reliquie Hearniane." "On September 4, 1723," writes Thomas Hearne, was a smooking match over against the Theatre in Oxford, a scattold being built up for it. The conditions were that anyone (man or woman) that could smook out three ounces of tobacco first without drinking or going off the stage should _have twelve shillings. Many tried, and it was thought that a journeyman taylor would have been victor, he smooking faster than, and being many pipes before, the rest; but at last he was so sick that twas thought he would have died, and an old man, that had been a soldier, und smooked gently, came off conqueror, smooking the three ounces quite out."
Even this feat was capped by the members of a club in Derbyshire, where, according to Mr. W. J. Bernhard-Smith, "the qualifications consisted in the candidate consuming an entire pound of shag tobacco at one sitting. A china teapot was the pipe, and he smoked through the spout."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.