Women and Cigarette Smoking
Ella Wheeler Wilcox tells us that at all fashionable dinners and smart functions in the dining-rooms and lobbies of almost all European hotels, especially in England, one sees the woman and her cigaret. In every modern play she is introduced. It is said that some American husbands encouraged it, but now are alarmed at the increasing power of the habit over their wives; and she truly says that no one who has a real understanding of womanly charm, of pure daintiness and fine ideals of life, can advocate cigaret-smoking for the sex. As expressed by one young Englishman of the better class: “I have never been able to see it [women smoking] without a feeling of repulsion. I never yet saw a woman smoke a cigaret who did not lose something of her charm and her womanliness in my eyes.” She further remarks: “It is not an unusual happening in these days to meet a delicate, refined looking, charmingly gowned woman who reminds you of an unfolding flower as she approaches you, only to have her exhale the odor of stale tobacco.” It is a curse mentally, physically, and morally.