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Show t'TSiS':'Ai ' ' 'eeh' 0y;' lly Weslbrook Pegler Released by WNU Fcaturn nOHRY, no got a match. I salt ungot match. No tcngo matcho I used to carry matches and I mus have four or five lighters kickini around the house, all out of gas. Om of them is gold, I think, a birthdaj or Christmas present from back it those crazy days when everybodj had to have an expensive lightej from the English spot on the avenui where the counter-hoppers weai those long white, doctor coats, likt butchers in a packing plant, anl you don't just ask for a pack a gaspers but act like you were in church and the guy goes Into a vaul i and comes out with something ven tasty in tinfoil from the old world. It certainly is funny about thosi English. In their own country 'thej have no more class than Sam'i f '"'"'"''''l swaP shop, dump 9Mi Ing everything ir f ' ; '3 t'le stow window ' t' ' ' and even g0O(i times they would fV Mi&Afyk ratner phft in youi A!1:A eye nan ae trouble to wait oi I OiJ you. But they comi L J&$& over to New Yorl and dress up their blurry clarks ir costumes and talk about nine-and-thruppence and a guinea-a-go and the Americans will pay anything foi their woodbines and cigarette lighters. light-ers. We have Park Avenue trasi who would nominate their kids at birth to be customers at Dunhill's 2( years later, like putting them up foi Groton or Choate. It is the difference between a tobacconist's and a cigar store. That lighter probably cost $50 and how many would you say sold In the United States at jewelry prices until all of a sudden they are all over town for 89 cents? Millions and millions of dollars worth. Saphliircs and rubles. Mine is engraved en-graved and a gold case, too. I forgot the gold case because it was . too much trouble to fill it. Anyway, I certain-End certain-End ly am glad I don't of have to find tha Smoking tweezers and scufi the heel of my thumb raw like Jimmy Valentine's, even two or three weeks changing flintj because, no, I didn't swear off, 1 just didn't smoke any more. Aftei more than 30 years, probably mor like 35, one morning I didn't smok until noon and then I didn't smoke until evening and when it came bed time and I hadn't smoked I WAS ALMOST AFRAID TO THINK ABOUT IT. But I ignored it and the next day I kept putting it off, and many's the time I had two or three days and sometimes even a week, but this time it was different. Other times I used to count the minutes and hours and figure crazy problems prob-lems like if I didn't smoke 30 a day for 30 days that would be, let's sec, three times o-so that would be 900 I didn't smoke in a month. This time I was aloof. After the second day, anyway, I ignored it Once in a while she would say she was real proud and nobody could realize what a comfort it was nol to have that reck always around bul I preferred not to discuss the matter mat-ter at all. After a month I was pretty sure of myself, although, as 1 say, this time it was no struggle because I just relaxed and didn'l make a struggle of it. I ignored it. Two months. I wasn't counting any more. I haven't counted in three months. I just don't smoke so I have no reason to carry matches. About eight months Si ill out I mentioned it in A a letter to Tunney be-Fighter be-Fighter cause a few years back he wrote a tract fearlessly denouncing cigarettes and I wrote one agreeing with him absolutely ab-solutely but confessing that 1 couldn't quit. Gene wrote a furious letter back. The way he ripped into cigarettes was just sheer bigotry. He hates them. It shows what a closed mind will do. I don't hate them and I certainly have more reason to than Gene does. They are just no dice to me. THEY DON'T MATTER ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. AN-OTHER. Yes, more than 30 years and, if you average in the extra early years when my consumption probably prob-ably wasn't more than 15 or 20 a day, I think it would be conservative conserva-tive to strike a figure of 20 a day. Walt a minute, 30 times 30 times 365 days I only make an expense account every Leap Year because arithmetic hurts but I am Just curious to sec. That's 323,500 cigarettes and the worst of It was with me I nearly always did inhale. in-hale. That's two and three-quarter Inches each time. All those cigarettes, by 12 into feet, then into miles 14 miles of cigarettes. What a haystack that would make. I remember when Tunney was champion some advertising company com-pany got up a painting of a big, handsome, blue-eyed harp and plastered plas-tered it all over the billboards and If it wasn't our Gene it certainly was an unreasonable facsimile, and him a teetotalitarian as far as the poisonous weed goes, although broadminded about alcohol and very good man around the Julepi. . |