ownership of blood-horses and a unique drag, but perfect courtesy founded
upon fine human feeling--that rare and indescribable gentleness and
consideration which rests upon manner as lightly as the bloom upon a fruit.
It may be imitated, as gold and diamonds are. But no counterfeit can harm
it; and, Adonis, it is incompatible with smoking in a lady's face, even if
she acquiesces.

(_September_, 1879)


II

Apollodorus came in the other morning and announced to the Easy Chair that
it had been made by common consent arbiter of a dispute in a circle of
young men. "The question," said he, "is not a new one in itself, but it
constantly recurs, for it is the inquiry under what conditions a gentleman
may smoke in the presence of ladies."

The Easy Chair replied that it could not answer more pertinently than in
the words of the famous Princess Emilia, who, upon being asked by a youth
who was attending her in a promenade around the garden, "What should you
say if a gentleman asked to smoke as he walked with you?" replied, "It is
not supposable, for no gentleman would propose it."

Naturally that youth did not venture to light even a cigarette. Emilia had
parried his question so dexterously that, although the rebuke was stinging,
he could not even pretend to be offended. His question was merely a form of
saying, "I am about to smoke, and what have you to say?" That he asked the
question was evidence of a lingering persuasion, inherited from an ancestry
of gentlemen, that it was not seemly to puff tobacco smoke around a lady