Social Progress of Tobacco 95 



Nicotian annals as the first and only recognition by 

 the State of the right of man to smoke in peace and 

 comfort. 



It is noteworthy that women have not participated 

 in the renaissance as they did in the introduction of 

 smoking, on the contrary proving its sternest oppo- 

 nents. There is no reason why women should not 

 smoke as well as men, as was the custom at first. 

 Custom vetoes it as illogically as decisively. So 

 strong is prejudice that men who admit the absurdity 

 of confining the solace of tobacco to the male sex 

 object to see ladies smoking. On the Continent and 

 in the East women smoke as devotedly as men. 

 Man is not wholly selfish in decreeing smoking as 

 unwomanly ; it is not that he denies the right of 

 woman to soothe her woes with tobacco, but an 

 instinct stronger than reason makes him dislike to 

 see a woman for whom he has any respect puffing 

 tobacco. Man's attitude is unfair, selfish and illo- 

 gical. Time may remove his objection, and already 

 smoking is becoming common by ladies in the highest 

 society. In a recent number of The Ladies' Field 

 Lady Jeune wrote : 



' The habit of smoking which is so common abroad 

 has now become among many women in England 

 quite as natural a thing, and it is not in the least 

 unusual for cigarettes to be handed round in the 

 drawing-room after the women have gone upstairs 

 and left the men to drink their wine and eat their 

 dessert. Hitherto it has been mainly confined to the 

 house, and even the bedroom or boudoir, but within 

 the last two months two cases of women smoking in 



