My Lady Nicotine: A Study in SmokeBarrie, J. M. (James Matthew)
General
My Lady Nicotine: A Study in Smoke
Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew)
Smoking -- Anecdotes; Tobacco -- Anecdotes; Wit and humor, Pictorial
"Her I never saw again, but I heard her voice. He kept me now in a
leather case in an inner pocket, where I was squeezed very flat. What
they said to each other I could not catch; but I understood afterward,
for he always repeated to me what he had been saying to her, and many
times he was loving, many times angry, like a bad man. At last came a
day when he had a letter from her containing many things he had given
her, among them a ring on which she had seemed to set great store.
What it all meant I never rightly knew, but he flung the ring into
the Thames, calling her all the old wicked names and some new ones.
I remember how we rushed to her house, along the bank this time, and
that she asked him to be her brother; but he screamed denunciations at
her, again speaking of 'that fellow,' and saying that he was going
to-morrow to Manitoba.
"So far as I know, they saw each other no more. He walked on the deck
so much now that his friend went back to London, saying he could get
no sleep. Sometimes we took long walks alone; often we sat for hours
looking at the river, for on those occasions he would take me out of the
leather case and put me on his knee. One day his friend came back and
told him that he would soon get over it, he himself having once had
a similar experience; but my master said no one had ever loved as he
loved, and muttered 'Vixi, vixi' to himself till the other told him not
to be a fool, but to come to the hotel and have something to eat. Over
this they quarrelled, my master hinting that he would eat no more; but
he ate heartily after his friend was gone.
"After a time we left the house-boat, and were in chambers in a great
inn. I was still in his pocket, and heard many conversations between him
and people who came to see him, and he would tell them that he loathed
the society of women. When they told him, as one or two did, that they
were in love, he always said that he had gone through that stage ages
ago. Still, at nights he would take me out of my case, when he was
alone, and look at me; after which he walked up and down the room in
an agitated manner and cried 'Vixi.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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