Ring Lardner

Star-Gazette/January 14, 1922

To the Editor: Readers may be interested to know that it is now over 5 wks. since I kissed my lady Nicotine good-by forever and I didn’t wait for no New Yrs. day to make it official but picked out a neutral date, namely the 9 of Dec., and for the benefit of other veteran smokers that may be contemplating some such a move will say that it is a whole lot like going to the electric chair or getting your hair cut, namely that most of the agony is thinking about it before hand and the reality itself ain’t so bad after the 1st. couple wks.

Wifes that is trying to make their husbands quit or vice versa is now at liberty to use me as a talking point and if the husband or wife says:

“Oh, maybe he wasn’t really a smoker,” why you can tell them that I only been smoking since I was 12 yrs. old and that is quite a wile ago and in the last 15 yrs. knocked off between 40 and 50 pills per day. So even if I didn’t have the habit I was afraid I might get it.

But this here ain’t no sermon and my admirers needn’t be scared that I am going ahead and tell them why I quit or what a strong will power have got and etc.

But I am writing this article so as if they’s any of my readers that intends to follow my sample and give up the weed why they will know some of the experiences that a person is libel to enjoy in connection with same.

The 1st thing that you have got to get use to is not rideing in the smoker. I suppose you will say that a man can ride in the smoker even if he don’t smoke but wait till you quit smokeing and then stick your horn inside of a smokeing car and you will know better, A non-smoker’s place is in the mixed coachs and a person must make up their mind to expect the usual annoyances that attends mingleing with the opp. Hex.

Like for inst., you set down beside a gal and you start to read your paper and 1st. thing you know she will make some remark or nuge you in the elbow. Personaly I don’t never encourage strange women and always manage to squelch them but know several cases of men that was drove back to smokeing because gals wouldn’t leave them alone on trains.

It Might be Worse

In the above remarks I am refering to suburban trains which is the only kind I been on lately, but think what it would be for a travelling man that has to make a through trip somewhere and if he has give up smoking he must set in the main body of the Pullman and expose himself for miles and miles to the advances and innuendos of women adventures and it would be no wonder if he weakened and smuck in the wash rm. and borrowed a cigarette off one of the Elks.

Another thing that seems funny when you 1st. quit is when you go to a show and when the curtain comes down for the end of the 1st. act, why, instead of jumping up you stay right in your seat and wait for the next act and in the mean wile the smokers that is setting in the same row steps on your ft. when they go out and steps on them again when they come back and at 1st. you want to kick them in the shin but after you been stepped on enough times you don’t mind it no more and finely your ft. gets so that they miss not being stepped on and you feel like you ought to take them to a show every night.

The next item is whiskers. When we was kids in school the teacher I used to tell about the evils of nicotine and one of the things it was supposed to do was to destroy hair and if you rubbed nicotine on a rat it would loose its hair. Well I didn’t think much about this at the time as in them days they was several better ways I could think of to spend my time than set end rub nicotine on rats and watch them get bald and besides I didn’t believe the story, but I remembered it and believed it the other day when I had laid off smoking a wil and seen what it done to a mana’s beard. When I use to be able to shame in the A.M. and still look pretty at supper time why now days when I go out on the st. a couple hrs. after shaveing everybody hollers, “Hello, Chas.,” thinking I am the secty. of state.

Saves Household Expenses

But the big item and chief int. in the new life is gum. I guess it ain’t no secret that pretty near everybody that quits smoking takes up gum, but it ain’t till you do it yourself that you know what it means to take up gum.

When you take up gum you don’t just drop a penny in a gum machine or go in a store and lay down a nickel and say give me a package of gum. The gum habit is just like the cigarette habit and when you get it good, why you have your favorite brand of gum and you buy it by the box and it costs you $1.00 for a box of 20 packages and how long do you think the 20 packages lasts? Well my friends they last one day, So it you are like I was and smoke cheap cigarettes which cost about a penny apiece why the gum habit will cost you about 55 cents more per day than the cigarette habit but your Mrs. will make that up in the meat bills, because when you work away at gum all day sometimes matriculateing. 6 or 7 sticks at a time, why by supper time your jaws is too more out for anything but soup.

What is worring me the most just now is the disposal of sticks that has outgrew their usefulness which can’t afford to build incinerators like they have got for the garbage in N. Y. City and every place I start to throw a few pieces away the Mrs. says don’t throw it there, and they’s no place you can throw it without offending somebody.

And another time you get a thrill is when you are invited out to dinner and your hostess finely says come on gents, dinner is ready and you go in the dinning rm. and set down to the table and all of a sudden you remember that they’s a little matter of 6 sticks of gum to be got rid off before you can eat.

Well friends, in a crisis like this it is every man for himself and I won’t give you my solution of the problem but will leave you to work it out in your own way when the time comes.

RING W. LARDNER