TO A JUVENILE SMOKER
Vanity Fair (UK) (August 18, 1904)
My excellent child,
I know you are wild,
Mr Rigg’s kindly efforts of course you’ve reviled:
But consider, before your annoyance you vent, all
The good you will gain, both of body and mental.
Hitherto you have been,
Thanks to fell nicotine,
—You’ll pardon me?—undersized, scraggy, and lean;
A thing calculated to pain and surprise, or,
To put it more crisply, a regular eyesore.
But now, thanks to Rigg,
You’ll grow hardy and big;
You won’t get bald early and take to a wig.
Your muscles will cease to be softer than putty,
When you drop your cheroots and abandon your cutty.
Cease, therefore, to fret
For your cheap cigarette;
It’s idle to hanker for what you can’t get:
Till years of discretion the weed you must lack. A
Cane chair, by the way, smokes not unlike tobacca.