MATRIMONY AND SMOKING COMPARED. The circumstances in which I gave up smoking were these: I was a mere bachelor, drifting toward what I now see to be a tragic middle age. I had become so accustomed to smoke issuing from my mouth that I felt incomplete without it; indeed, the time came when I could refrain from smoking if doing nothing else, but hardly during the hours of toil. To lay aside my pipe was to find myself soon afterward wandering restlessly round my table. No blind beggar was ever more abjectly led by his dog, or more loath to cut the string. I am much better without tobacco, and already have a difficulty in sympathizing with the man I used to be. Even to call him up, as it were, and regard him without prejudice is a difficult task, for we forget the old selves on whom we have turned our backs, as we forget a street that has been reconstructed. Does the freed slave always shiver at the crack of a whip? I fancy not, for I recall but dimly, and without acute suffering, the horrors of my smoking days. There were nights when I awoke with a pain at my heart that made me hold my breath. I did not dare move. After perhaps ten minutes of dread, I would shift my position an inch at a time.

Explore the humorous tales of "My Lady Nicotine." Penned by Barrie, this collection of short stories and essays from the 1890s offers a unique blend of fiction, culture, and humanities. Each piece is a testament to Barrie's storytelling prowess, making it a treasure for readers who enjoy collective works.

My Lady Nicotine "—a book that suggests but is very unlike " The Reveries of a Bachelor." The former is urban : the latter is provincial. A briar pipe filled with Arcadia Mixture starts the reveries in the one ; a hearth fire, in the other. The five bachelors in " My Lady Nicotine " seem to be utterly dissimilar in tastes and feelings—and have only one bond of union, their common love for the famous Arcadia Mixture. The solemnity with which they treat their pipes; their assured superiority to everybody outside of the circle which knows and appreciates that mysterious brand of tobacco ; the sentimental selfishness of their bachelor existence, and the delicate humor with which the quiet episodes are narrated—these are some of the charming qualities of the book. But the crowning humor of it is that the story is told by one of their number who boldly announces in the first chapter that he has married, and his wife has won him from his pipe and his comrades. He cheaply moralizes on their enslavement, and then in reveries calls up the happy days when he smoked with them. The closing chapter is a most subtle piece of writing. The narrator praises his constancy to his promise never to smoke again, and adds: " I have not even any craving for the Arcadia now, though it is a tobacco that should only be smoked by our greatest men." Then he confesses that when his wife is asleep and all the house is still, he sits with his empty briar in his mouth, and listens to the taps of a pipe in the hands of a smoker (whom he has never seen) on the other side of

People have always smoked, and they probably always will. Every culture in recorded history has smoked something, whether for pleasure or relief, whether as part of an elaborate religious ritual or merely to strike a pose. This is the first truly comprehensive history of smoking, describinbg all of its forms, practices, paraphernalia and materials, in cultures, locations and times throughout the world.

A “vivid, unsentimental, powerful” portrait of a Southern marriage by the New York Times–bestselling author of Ellen Foster (Publishers Weekly). “She hasn’t been dead four months and I’ve already eaten to the bottom of the deep freeze. I even ate the green peas. Used to I wouldn’t turn my hand over for green peas . . .” Ruby Stokes has died too young and left her husband, Blinking Jack, behind. With alternating entries from each of them, A Virtuous Woman recounts the tale of their years together in an “exquisitely realised piece of writing” (Elizabeth Buchan, The Mail on Sunday). From their very different backgrounds—Ruby a daughter of wealth, Jack a penniless tenant farmer—to their relationships with their landlord and his family, and the strength they drew from each other in the face of hardship, this story of a marriage is “full of fantastically gritty metaphors . . . A book that will change your dreams” (The Observer). “Gibbons again flawlessly reproduces the humor and idiom of rural eastern North Carolina.” —Library Journal

My Lady Nicotine "—a book that suggests but is very unlike " The Reveries of a Bachelor." The former is urban : the latter is provincial. A briar pipe filled with Arcadia Mixture starts the reveries in the one ; a hearth fire, in the other. The five bachelors in " My Lady Nicotine " seem to be utterly dissimilar in tastes and feelings—and have only one bond of union, their common love for the famous Arcadia Mixture. The solemnity with which they treat their pipes; their assured superiority to everybody outside of the circle which knows and appreciates that mysterious brand of tobacco ; the sentimental selfishness of their bachelor existence, and the delicate humor with which the quiet episodes are narrated—these are some of the charming qualities of the book. But the crowning humor of it is that the story is told by one of their number who boldly announces in the first chapter that he has married, and his wife has won him from his pipe and his comrades. He cheaply moralizes on their enslavement, and then in reveries calls up the happy days when he smoked with them. The closing chapter is a most subtle piece of writing. The narrator praises his constancy to his promise never to smoke again, and adds: " I have not even any craving for the Arcadia now, though it is a tobacco that should only be smoked by our greatest men." Then he confesses that when his wife is asleep and all the house is still, he sits with his empty briar in his mouth, and listens to the taps of a pipe in the hands of a smoker (whom he has never seen) on the other side of