CIGAR GIRL TALKS
OF MARRIED BLISS.
DOESN'T SEE MUCH EVIDENCE
OF IT AMONG MEN.
Does It, Whiskers or No Whis-
kers, and She Is Not
Dodging the Issue.
"This isn't a cigar store, it's a confidential station," said the lady who spends the day selling clear Havanas for straight 10 and some for a quarter. "No, this is the place where a man comes up and spends one minute in purchasing a rope and then lets go of his secrets for the next ten.
"See that man there, the one who just left the counter? Well, that fellow has been drinking so much that corn juice is beginning to ooze out of his face. He insists on telling me how good he is when sober. Of course, I have to take his word for it.
"A lot of people wonder why I don't nab some of these human prize packages and take up the tranquil life in a four-room flat. Well, if they heard as many of these hard-luck matrimonial narratives as I do, it wouldn't take 'em long to understand why I play single and look satisfied.
"One of my regular customers has been married for five years. He tells me on the strict level that he would rather go to the pen for five years than to take another woman with the same disposition as his wife.
"Another man asked me if I didn't think $50 for a woman's hat was unreasonable. I told him that I could wear a different hat every day in the week for $50 and look like a class A type at that. Just what I thought, said the man with the millinery troubles. Some wives who never had to earn their own living don't know the A B C's of economy.
"I get an earful every day on domestic complications and I have observed that these difficulties generally arise in the case of a pair of doves who couldn't see life with a field glass unless they were both harnessed on the same limb. I don't want to appear pessimistic. I think that matrimonial negotiations is the finish. It's like getting your teeth filled. It may be painful, but you're just up against it.
"As for sentimental orthography, however, that's a brand that finds no place in my diary. Just between you and me (I'll hand out a little cross-your-heart talk myself now) I intend to hook up to a live one some of these days. It will be on a commercial basis with scientific auxiliaries. I want a man about ten years older than I am which means, of course, that his mental faculties will be well developed. He will also be tamed by that time. It doesn't matter whether he has long whisker or whether he eats rice pudding with his knife, just so as he can listen to reason and has a bale of long green to keep the grocer, the dressmaker, the dress maker and the headgear lady from getting peevish between the 1st and 10th of the month. When that specimen comes along at the psychological moment I'm going to put on my affinity manners, and when he springs those divine words you can see our little soul sister batting out the longest home run ever recorded in these parts.
"If you have anything of that description in your form chart," concluded the cigar lady, "just put me in the running as the one best bet."
