[Author Unknown]

[Published in the Knickerbocker, August 1863 (62.2)]

[Edited and Annotated by Kate Penney for the University of Arizona Magazine Edition Project, April 13, 2015]

[Editor's Note]

And what say you to

‘A Plea for a Segar^[1]’

‘In these days of moral reform and forbidden luxury, we are too apt to heed the sayings of those blue-nosed croakers of temperance^[2], and to imagine that all who are the victims of their teachings really stand in need of them. Now, I am not one of those, and I rather pride myself in taking, with many others of my stripe, a stand against these pretended benefactors. Ever since the time of Sir Walter Raleigh^[3], there has been more unwonted abuse heaped upon the soothing weed than any other one article of luxury, spirituous liquors alone excepted. I deem this introduction a sufficient one, to apologize for the recital which is to follow, and in which is embodied my early experience with my old friend, the segar. Imagine for yourselves an ambitious youngster, who is firmly convinced, from the force of imitation, that smoking is the ultimatum of happiness to every one who can grace a pair of pants or wear a roundabout jacket^[4]. Follow him through his initiatory stage, when first rolled paper was a sufficient apology to his inflated pride; next, the piece of rattan^[5]; lastly, the corn-silk, and you have before you my individual self making the first essay with a genuine, bona-fide segar. It is now many years since, but the recollection of self-satisfaction is still vivid with me, how I bit off its end, rolled it around in my mouth, spat, and searched for a light. My first impressions, as the smoke was puffed from under my beardless lip, was that of superiority over all my schoolmates, at the physical endurance I possessed, that enabled me thus to defy the known powers of the nauseous drug. I smoked away, amid the exclamations of surprise from my compeers, and seemed to all around me be getting on finely; but alas! too soon a suspicious sense of ‘goneness’ took possession of me. I leaned against the fence, my limbs began to totter, my lips began to quiver, but my pride would not allow me to desist; I had gained the esteem of my mates for hardihood, and I was determined, if possible, to show them that I merited it. I smoked on; the potent roll of tobacco was hardly consumed to the middle, and yet my reason already cried out against the imprudence of another puff; but such is human nature, I heeded not its advice. My situation began to be desperate indeed, and I was made conscious of the suspicions of those about me, that the poison was beginning to work; the perspiration broke out in large beads over my face, a deathly sickness of the stomach seized me, my very fingers trembled, as if hesitating to obey the force of my will; I drew in three or four long, deep inspirations of air, and was encouraged to take another puff, and then it was that my pride left me; then it was that I cared for the jeers of no one, not even the derisive smile of little blue-eyed Mary. In short, I was compelled to give up the fight, and ignominiously lean my head against the fence, to submit to the upheavings of an outraged stomach. I then tried to forget that there was such an article as tobacco; but it was useless. Sick as I was, no pity greeted me; ‘I told you so,’ was all the sympathy I could obtain. In this condition I remained for a long time, but finally recovered to walk home, and in my weak moments to make what I thought would be a binding resolution, never to repeat the operation. This resolve, however, was soon broken, and made again on six or seven successive occasions, for like reasons, and finally I came out a full-fledged smoker. This was the age of manhood; and now, in the noonday of middle age, when I look back upon my past experience with the weed, I am forced to convince myself that the prickings of the thorn at first only helped me to appreciate the flavor of the rose afterwards. My object in writing this is to offer a plea in favor of an old friend, by an allusion to past experience. Now, I am not in league with a segar-store, nor am I a dealer in the article of tobacco myself, but I boldly say that such institutions should be fostered, because I believe them productive of much good in offering to poor, disconsolate man the wherewithal to make him happy. Are you low-spirited? are you irritable? have you a toothache? a headache? a full stomach? are you oppressed with heat? are you drowsy or wakeful? behold in the segar the panacea^[6]. Reader, I have given you a list of my ailings and the antidote for all, in the true spirit of the philanthropist, and now permit me to ask you in the same spirit; ‘Do you smoke?’

            No we don’t.

Editor's Note

With an annual consumption hitting a high of 26 per person in 1860, and about 1,500 nationwide cigar factories employing around 8,000 people, the cigar enjoyed a peak of popularity in the United States in the 1860s. And yet the author of this piece makes no secret of his kindred connection with the device, which creates an interesting dichotomy of the universal and the personal. The author speaks of his cigar in a hushed, intimate way—calling it a “close friend” against the judgmental moralizing of loose strands of the American temperance movement—and yet ends the piece by recommending it as a cure-all antidote for anyone, anytime, anywhere, with any affliction. It’s an “us against the world” mentality the author is spouting—not just against the “moral reformers” but also the sneers of his schoolyard friends in his initial, disastrous attempt to smoke. At its heart, the anecdote is a story of tough-love conquest; before the author can truly “connect” with the cigar, he has to suffer the vomit and the spitting first. After that, man and cigar are joined in an intimate, borderline sacred, bond. At the end of the piece however, this intimacy is subsumed into a general universality, as he recommends it to everyone.