We all repaired to the library, where my aunt lighted some candles, and where my uncle produced a box of cigars, whilst Conny struck a wax match, and shaded the flame with her hand (whereby the light shone in her eyes, and made her hair sparkle like the sea at night), ready to hold to my cigar when I wanted it. I asked Mrs. Hargrave if she didn’t object to the smell of tobacco. Oh no; she liked it. She owned that she didn’t much care about pipes, but she knew no smell so fragrant as that of a good cigar. “Don’t you think my brother the major would enjoy this?” said my uncle, lying back in a capacious arm-chair. “It would be his ideal of happiness,” I answered. And I believed it would. The room, though large, was wonderfully snug, furnished with book-cases filled with volumes, and the walls ornamented with rich old engravings. My aunt sat near the table sewing, but not busily; and Conny occupied a chair near her papa, with her hands folded on her lap, doing nothing. What could be more homely than such a scene? Oh, ladies, do you not know that your presence makes the cigar doubly soothing and fragrant, and choice beyond the wildest advertising dreams of the tobacconist? There are men--call them Ogres, Bluebeards, Turks, Ashantees--who profess to think that the one great charm of tobacco is, that it gives them an excuse to get away from your society. But take the word of a man who loves, admires, reverences your sex with the ardour of a Frenchman and the loyalty of a Briton--that to all good men Havannah fumes never taste so sweet as when your white hands present the lighted spill, and when your fair presences are enthroned in the ambrosial cloud. No, madam, don’t--pray don’t pretend that good tobacco-smoke is objectionable. I speak not of mundungus, of the poisonous negro-head, of the raw, coarse cavendish. These, I admit, discharge fumes fit only for hothouses. I have in my mind the dry, the nutty, the aromatic cigar, to which, give me leave to ask, did ever an engaged woman object? Fie! you liked it, Julia, when James was courting you. Didn’t you give him a silver match-box? It is wifely tyranny, I say, that drives him and his _intimidads_ into a back-room; it is caprice that kecks at his comforts, not at his cigars. Go! thou art not my wife. I would not own thee. The true, the faithful, the fond, sits at her husband’s feet, whilst he exhales the blue smoke in rings to the ceiling. I call a blessing on her. May her sons be honest men, and may they never know the want of a good cigar! It was eight o’clock, when my uncle suddenly sitting bolt upright, said, “I don’t want to hurry you, Charlie; but as you have a two miles’ drive before you, and as I believe your landlady has been expecting you since eight o’clock this morning, what say if I order the phaeton to be got ready?”