The Way to Smoke a Cigar.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 February 1922, Page 1

The Way to Smoke a Cigar.

(By a Connoisseur.)

( igar-sinoking is a drama with a prologue and three acts: you choose vour need, you open the cud, von light up. you smoke.

Simple!” say you. On the contrary, here we have a ritual bungled at each stage alarmingly b.v vulgar people, correctly done from first to last by a mere band!ul of the cognoscenti. How many of the new rich, for example, persist in choosing a cigar by its color •' The expert, on the other hand, knows the quality of a particular leaf I rum its taste, its strength, its perfume while burning, its rate of combustion, its fineness of texture.

Essentially, not one of these facts lias anything whatever to do with color. A cigar may be very light- in color and yet lie strong; it may be very dark and set lie mild..

I myself smoke from 10 to 15 Havanas a day. 1 choose them by perfume in the box which 1 select from one of the two or three makers whose names are now household words.

Taking one of those cigars from its box, I do not cut it or pierce it. Only a Philistine would commit such a sacrilege upon this perfectly proportioned thing. Why should I hack its exquisite moulding? W r hy waste the eighth of an inch of the richest leaf tobacco in the world?

No. If the smoking end of the cigar he dosed, I press it.gently between my forefinger and thumb.

I make a slight break which 1 rub lightly with my third finger. I remove a tiny piece of the outer wrapper about a quarter of an inch long and one-six-teenth of an inch in width. That is the correct way to open a beautiful cigar. • * * * * How, next, should it he lighted? In Cuba, where life is an art, they hand round for the purpose in a silver vessel called a candela, a live coal buried in the ashes of some pungent wood. Compare with that the action of our graceless vandals who without a blush will light a cigar fiom a pipe, a cigarette, or another cigar! Triple hurt is done. The perfume from such lighters taints the new cigar; the cigar itself will not evenly ignite; and these improprieties cause the flesh of the connoisseur to creep. ' i." should a cigar ever be lighted from the conrs'' flame of a paper spill. Lacking the candela of the Cubans, perfect combustion can lie attained if you will first bold the cigar in your right hand, warm the tip of it evenly with a lighted match, put the cigar in your mouth, and draw twice or thrice at the match, now hold a quarter of an inch away from the hot tin. Do not chew your cigar-end. The cigar should,he held half by the lips and I a:f by the teeth, with its weight so distributed that the cigar-end will not , iit-.-*ak off in unpleasant pieces on your r lips. If lighted straight and smoked f . straight it will burn straight; it has I been built, to do so.

! .Many folk smoke cigars too quickly and then blame them for getting hot.' Smoke slowly, therefore, and smoke

just so long as it is comfortable for yop . to hold your Havana between, your lips. / “Py the cigars they make and the composers they love,” writes John Galsworthy, “ ye shall know the texture of men’s souls.”