Thou’rt like the man of worth who gives To goodness every day, The odour of whose virtues lives When he has passed away. When in the lonely evening hour, Attended but by thee, O’er history’s varied page I pore, Man’s fate in thine I see. Oft, as thy snowy column grows, Then breaks and falls away, I trace how mighty realms thus rose, Thus trembled to decay. Awhile, like thee, earth’s masters burn, And smoke and fume around, And then like thee to ashes turn And mingle with the ground. Life’s but a leaf adroitly rolled, And time’s the wasting breath, That late or early we behold Gives all to dusky death. From beggar’s frieze to monarch’s robe One common doom is passed; Sweet nature’s work, the swelling globe, Must all burn out at last. And what is he who smokes thee now? A little moving heap, That soon like thee to fate must bow, With thee in dust must sleep. But though thy ashes downward go, Thy essence rolls on high; Thus, when my body must lie low, My soul shall cleave the sky. CHARLES SPRAGUE. From _The New York Tobacco Plant_. ―――― MY FIRST CIGAR. As the years vanish, darling, Time, with the sponge of Fate, Wipes the events we cherish Cleanly from Memory’s slate; E’en the first pair of * * That I put on, I vow, I have forgot their colour, Their cut and their pattern now; When did the dawning whisker Sprout on my boyish face? When did my soaring treble Change to a manly bass? I have forgotten, darling, I have forgotten――but, ah! One memory ever will haunt me―― The taste of my First Cigar! Not in fair Cuba, darling, Under a sun of gold; Or down in old Virginny Were those brown leaves enrolled, But from the English cabbage Sprang the enchanting weed In a Whitechapel cellar, Moulded and made, indeed; I cannot tell you, darling, How my heart thrill’d with glee, As down on the shiny counter Planked I my last two _d._, And the fair girl who served me, Lounging behind the bar, Handed across the beer-pulls A light for my First Cigar. Moments of dire upheaval, Darling, your boy has known, When salmon for supper unsettled Sadly his system’s tone, When at two a.m. on the doorstep He has stood, with a vacant smile, Two bob and a toothpick in pocket, And wearing a stranger’s tile,―― And oft on the billowy ocean, His anguish has naught assuaged, When there was a run on the brandy, And the basins were all engaged,―― But even these pangs, my darling, Are not to be held on a par With the writhe, and the rack, and the riot, That followed my First Cigar. CLO. GRAVES. From _Hood’s Comic Annual_, 1889. ―――― CONFESSION OF A CIGAR-SMOKER.