The Small Boy's First Cigar.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 184, 25 December 1886, Page 2

The Small Boy's First Cigar.

A half-dozen mouthtuls of smoke usually briog the first drop of perspiration to the surface, and about that time thore is also a. hollow little cough which seems to issue from the region of the small boy's heart. Something has gone wrong — he does not know exactly what, but ho thinki he hast swallowed one-oighth of the smoke —and he take? the cigar out ot his mouth and regards it with a suspicious gaze. Tho inspection seems to absuvb him that the cigai* is not an Anarchist's bomb or a Socialist's torpedo, and he bravely begins again. This time he swallows seven-eighths of the smoke, and tears dim hi? youtnful eyes aa he frantically tries to bring the smoke oat of hi 3 ears ; but he doesn't talter yet, though, he wonders what is going to happen next aa ho returns to the work hu ha* himself laid out. It is later on in the progiamme that the work lays him out, but burring a little shiver or two there has boon no symptom, of such a disaster yot. Ko small boy in hi* guileless unwisdom, tver begins h : .a first cigar without previously laying in an inexhaustible ytore of matches. This enables him to tcorn asking another boy for a light ; it also enables him to get appropriately sick. A? he returns to his cigar now he notices that the smoke has ceased curling from the lighted end, and finds, after due investigation, that it has really gone out. He lights it, but the taste saeme to have changed aart grown bitter, and he begins to doubt the expediency of prosecuting his study any farther. Then another little boy passes along, tugging valiantly at another cigar, and he begins to take frosh hope. He has grave doubts by this time of the sanity of the men who indict JJbat unoking is a pleasure, but ii f -n't quite prepared for the revolution that soon begins, Then there is a hoaviness about r ho regions of his stomach which he dp^y'nofc understand ; he hears the rumble o£ distant thuuder ; the birds cease their sin^in?, tho =ky twvntt green ; the grass seemh blue, and n look of unutterable anguish sottles upon his face* If he be destined for future greatness his immortal soul stays down. The life of the small boy is filled with exciting incidents, but there is no day so big as that on whicb be smokes his first cigar. In time he has his first affair of the heart* then he graduates from school and later oa gets married, and still later dies. But none of theae events affect him quite as the first cigar. As he grows older the memory of that event seems to linger by him, and, though recollections of other events fade* this at least he carries to the end And when, in aftet years, his own small boy comes reeking with the odour of bad tobacco, and that same look of anguish on his face, it ia with the consciousness of ccnviotion that he assures the boy 'a mother ol the* futility of cholera antidotes, and advksa the boy to go and lie down. — " Morcbaa."* Traveller."