Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:
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CIGARS
| When I was a youth I used to take all kinds
of pledges, and do my best to keep them, but I never could, because I
didn't strike at the root of the habit--the desire; I generally broke
down within the month. Once I tried limiting a habit. That worked tolerably
well for a while. I pledged myself to smoke but one cigar a day. I kept
the cigar waiting until bedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it.
But desire persecuted me every day and all day long; so, within the week
I found myself hunting for larger cigars than I had been used to smoke;
then larger ones still, and still larger ones. Within the fortnight I
was getting cigars made for me--on a yet larger pattern. They still grew
and grew in size. Within the month my cigar had grown to such proportions
that I could have used it as a crutch. It now seemed to me that a one-cigar
limit was no real protection to a person, so I knocked my pledge on the
head and resumed my liberty. - Following the Equator |
Dan
Beard's illustration from |
 Illustration from the Dave Thomson collection. From THE UNABRIDGED MARK TWAIN, Running Press, 1976 with opening remarks by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (c) 1976 Charles Santore |
"I know a good cigar better than you do, for I have had sixty years' experience. No, that is not what I mean; I mean I know a bad cigar better than anybody else. I judge by the price only; if it costs above 5 cents, I know it to be either foreign or half foreign and unsmokable. "By me I have many boxes of Havana cigars, of all prices, from
20 cents apiece up to $1.66 apiece; I bought none of them; they were
all presents; they are an accumulation of several years. I have never
smoked one of them, and never shall. I work them off on the visitor.
You shall have a chance when you come. |
I am a happy man. You have made me very grateful. For this is the very first time that the Crown Jewels have ever been adequately & deliriously praised by an unprejudiced person. Still it is the cigars' own fault that this is so for it is a cigar which excites envy & jealousy in the smoker because he knows & feels the truth of which you have said; that there is no other cigar that is just like it. There are cigars which resemble it but only in appearance, not in spirit & not in the ability to dare & do. There is no other cigar that can make a person want to go away & get by himself & think this life over & wonder if it is altogether worth while. I will send you some more when you get out. Let me know. Any man of fine intelligence who is acquainted with Crown Jewels prizes them above any other gems & saves them & hoards them. I gave Harry Rogers a box two years ago & he has them yet. Let me know when you are out.
- Letter to Dr. Edward C. Rushmore regarding Crown Jewels cigars, 9 November 1906 (published in The World with a Fence Around It: Tuxedo Park - The Early Days by George Mead Rushmore, p.192.)
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