Take, for instance, all those eager little housewives who rushed right out on the news of the declaration of war and tried to corner all the flour the grocer had, and all the bacon in the butcher-shop, forgetting that by the time the family had eaten about one-fifth of the supply, the flour would make a Limburger cheese seem like sweet hay for aroma, and the bacon would be scratching at the cellar door to get out. They even bought crates of eggs and oranges and cart-loads of vegetables!
Men's notions of economy are frequently not much better. We have a friend—oh, we still manage to keep one or two—who announced not long ago that he had given up cigars. He said they cost too much. We were rather sorry to hear of his decision, for he is one of those large, expansive fellows who are becoming to a cigar—he smokes them with the band on. We expressed our surprise.
"Not giving up smoking altogether, are you?" we asked. "Won't you find it difficult to think without nicotine to act as a...."
"Certainly I'm not giving up smoking! I've taken to a pipe, and believe me, my boy, it's the only smoke that...."
But you know how they all talk the first few days.
He showed the pipe to us. It was a beautiful thing, meerschaum, all dolled up with gold and amber. And it reposed in the cutest little case—one of those plush and papier-maché affairs that add a dollar and a half to the cost of any pipe. They are really worth about seven cents.
He showed us also a new tobacco pouch—grained leather, with gold monogram and rubber lining. Eight dollars, if it cost a cent!
Under his arm he carried a tin of tobacco that looked as big as a hat-box, and his pockets were full of pipe-cleaners, special ash-trays, and a patent combination arrangement of tools with which you could tamp the tobacco down in your pipe, gouge holes in the wad if you got it too tight, scrape the charcoal off the sides, and dig the pipe out when you had smoked it. All the thing lacked was a compartment in the end for ice to cool your tongue.
Altogether the outfit cost about twenty-five or thirty dollars. We said nothing. The thing was too pathetic. Three days later we met him smoking a cigar—still with the band on. He looked us straight in the eye with a truculent air, as though daring us to make a comment. We didn't. We knew how he felt. We had been through it all ourself.
Personally we have taken to smoking cheaper cigars, ever since that last increase in taxes. In our days of affluence we used to walk into the shop of our favorite tobacconist, and throwing down a quarter with a reckless hand, would say, "Gimme three!" Now we slip into a drug-store—we cannot bear to abate a jot of our lordly air in the presence of our tobacconist—and dejectedly buy a "five-cent straight," though they cost ten cents now.