Wholly Smokes Read Online Free Page B

IN THE WAY MUCH OF
    THE TIME EXCLAMATION
    SOME OFFICER VERY RUDELY INFORMED
    ME TODAY THAT I MAY NOT SMOKE
    NEAR SOMETHING CALLED THE POWDER
    MAGAZINE STOP
    WE SHALL SEE ABOUT THAT STOP
    REGARDS ADAIR
     
    Nothing further is known; evidently Adair went down with the ship.
    Blessington and the rest of America went to war. As he told the board:
    At last! We have a chance to help an oppressed people and also to secure the important Havana and Manila cigar interests of our beloved General Snuff. It would be a national tragedy if those interests were to remain in the cruel hands of Spanish oppressors. Let us keep them in our far more benign hands boys.
    With this in mind, I am prepared to take part in the scrap personally. I must avenge my cousin and my countrymen – and do some business in Havana andManila. I am therefore raising a regiment. If Teddy Roosevelt can have his “Rough Riders,” I will have my cigar contingent – my Puff Riders!
     
    Blessington soon rode off to Cuba, whence he sent the following letter home:
    My beloved Letty,
    Life here is very hard, what with the swamps, the heat, and the sickness all around. Speaking of which, I believe I have discovered the cause of malaria. I have noticed that men who smoke cigars seem immune to the disease, while non-smokers soon come down with it. Perhaps, when all this madness is over, we can use that in our advertisement – A C URE FOR M ALARIA .
    Incidentally, I have not received your usual shipment of cigars. I hope you haven’t forgotten to send it! I cannot abide the local ‘Havana’ products, which are inferior. I will wait instead for your next consignment of our very own Dunkelmeister Grandees. How I long for you, my dear, and for a fine old Yankee stogie!
    Your affectionate husband,
    Blessington
     
    This was his last letter. The stogies never arrived, and Blessington succumbed to malaria.

    The Lady Has a Light
for your

Dunkelmeister
Grandee
–
    Yes, Miss Liberty
believes in Your
Freedom – to smoke the
smoothest, finest-tasting
cigar of your life.
“Bring me those tired of
ordinary cigars, those
yearning to draw freely”
–

    Try this new land of
smoking. You’ll never
go back to the old.

    “The Lady Has a Light” – advertisement for Dunkelmeister Grandee Cigars (1894)

A Good Cigar is a Smoke
     

    Augustus Badcock
    Blessington Badcock was succeeded by his brother Augustus, the first head of the firm to glimpse the full power of advertising. Augustus began with the simple idea that “a pretty girl can sell anything,” and he built mightily upon it. He outlined his plan in a 1913 memorandum:
    Rudyard Kipling had it wrong when he said that “a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” The plain fact is, women and cigars are very close to the same thing, at least in the masculine mind. For isn’t the enjoyment of a cigar akin to the enjoyment of making love to a woman? That is, a fiery, forbidden pleasure, enjoyed in private, often after a good dinner.
    Perhaps smoking is only a substitute for the fires of passion. A man may smoke to show a woman how manly he is, or to cover his embarrassment with her, or because he has only a burning cigar to kiss instead of her blazing beauty. But when he applies his lips to a “sweet postprandial cigar,” (or pipe, or cigarette) you may be sure he is dreaming of finer after-dinner pleasures.
    Think of the cigar divans of days gone by – bordellos disguised as smoking rooms. Think of Carmen rolling cigarettes in the factory.
    Think of the female apache dancer, sharing a burning cigarette with the man she adores and hates. And as Oscar Wilde put it, “A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”
    We at General Snuff must find a way of selling this dream, the dream of tobacco as a mistress. We must make the customer feel that, when he lifts the lid upon a box of our cigars, he is unlocking the door of a hareem.