The Arcadian Mixture

— We were talking, the other night, four women of us, about the feminine attitude toward man’s chief darling, his pipe. We agreed that no one was ever better fitted to discuss the general bearing of the case, because we have not a grain of ethical animosity, nor even a pathological qualm. If a man choose to smoke, let him, said we. The universe is a good airy space for the rioting of individualism ; and if he transgress too far, he’ll run his head against a post and learn his own lesson. But, next to his pipe, we are his chiefest friends. How does our rival affect us ? We agreed that a very subtle development of chivalry lies in the question whether a man should or should not smoke in a woman’s presence ; that is, the sort of woman who has not yet learned to toss off her own cigarette. If she have the complaisance or the sympathy to ask him to light his cigar, that is one thing : she enjoys the satisfaction of granting a privilege ; he, the delightful sense of settling down to it with a clear conscience ; he has entered into an inheritance to which he is absolutely entitled. But what if he petition for it ? Ay, there’s the rub. Then he rouses in her the world-old resentment against a liberty. He puts a question which can have but one answer, unless she chooses to forfeit her feminine desire to please. “ Is it disagreeable ?” “ Not at all,” she replies, no doubt with a rigid adherence to truth. But read in the form it probably assumes in her own soul, the answer would run : “ Yes, smoke ; take me at my word, and do it. Smoke, if you are willing. And I shall sit by, in the consciousness that you have pushed me an inch further from my possibly absurd pedestal built up through the chivalry of ages. You have cheapened the ideal relation between us. ‘ What you can do, you may do in fairyland.’ Therefore smoke, and — since I am off my pedestal — be hanged to you ! ”