and this is, perhaps, the golden
rule), no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not
smoke. It is not for nothing that this 'ignoble tabagie,' as Michelet
calls it, spreads over all the world. Michelet rails against it
because it renders you happy apart from thought or work; to provident
women this will seem no evil influence in married life. Whatever
keeps a man in the front garden, whatever checks wandering fancy and
all inordinate ambition, whatever makes for lounging and contentment,
makes just so surely for domestic happiness."

Nothing is more marked in the change in the social attitude towards
tobacco than the revolution which has taken place in woman's view of
smoking. The history of smoking by women is dealt with separately in
the next chapter; but here it may be noted that most of the old
intolerance of tobacco has disappeared. "To smoke in Hyde Park," said
the late Lady Dorothy Nevill, in 1907, "even up to comparatively
recent years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable, while
smoking anywhere with a lady would have been classed as an almost
disgraceful social crime."

Women do not nowadays shun the smell of smoke as they did in early
Victorian days, as if it were the most dreadful of odours. They are
tolerant of smoking in their presence, in public places, in
restaurants--in fact, wherever men and women congregate--to a degree
that would have horrified extremely their mothers and grandmothers. It
is only within the last few years that visits to music-halls and
theatres of varieties have been socially possible to ladies. Men go
largely because they can smoke during the performance; women go
largely because they have ceased to consider tobacco-smoke as a thing
to be rigidly avoided, and therefore have no hesitation in
accompanying their menfolk.

The observant visitor to the promenade concerts annually given in the
Queen's Hall, Langham Place, will notice that but one small section of
the grand circle is reserved for non-smokers, while smoking is freely
allowed (with no absurd ban on the friendly pipe) in every other part
of the great auditorium--floor, circle and balcony.

There are still some people who share the Duke of Wellington's
delusion that smoking promotes drinking, although experience proves
the contrary, and historic evidence, especially as regards drinking
after dinner, shows that it was the introduction of the cigar,
followed by that of the cigarette, which absolutely kil