THEIR FIRST CIGAR by Lee M'Lellan

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · Apr 2, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 14.

THEIR FIRST CIGAR.

By Lee M'Lellan

BY LEE M'LELLAN.

THIS all happened forty years ago or more, and the little boys, of seven and nine perhaps, wore very short jackets and long, baggy trousers, like all the other little boys of those days. They were deacon's sons, and well-trained, good boys, too. But temptation came to them very much as it does now to boys in shirt waists and knee pantaloons.

It was after tea one pleasant evening in May. Arthur and Rufus had seen four or five bigger boys go by together as if something was up; and Tom Bradford, the minister's boy, coming along just then, these three little fellows hurried down Pearl Street, too, and stole quietly around Cummings' shop after them.

The carpenters had gone and the door was locked. The boys went in and out among the piles of boards, and there, behind the shop, were all the big boys whom they were looking for, and Hen Prince was smoking a stub of a cigar. How smart he looked to them! It was no first time with Henry. He could hold the cigar quid in his mouth, put his hands in his pockets, and straddle, and blow the smoke right out of his nose without choking. But the tobacco twist was about used up now, and getting hot for his lips and nose.

He had to throw it away, but he said as he did so: "Look here, now; let's have a whole one to-morrow night, and all try it. Here! what you here for, sissies?" cried Hen, spying the three little boys peeking from behind the boards. "Don't you go now and tell, or we'll give you the worst licking you ever got in your life. I tell you what," he went on more pleasantly, "you come down here to-morrow night after supper, all three of you, and you shall have a blow. You can learn. You're big enough. They won't be telling now," said Hen to his mates, with a knowing look.

Not a word did Arthur and Rufus say to each other about their invitation as they went to bed, nor the next day either. But when Tom Bradford happened around about sunset next night, they just concluded all at once to go down by Cummings' shop.

The big boys, ten or twelve years old, were there, and Hen was just coming over a back fence. He pulled out of his pocket a large, rank cigar, and some matches, too. (What would Mr. Cummings have thought if he had known?) Henry knew just how to start it, and he pulled at it lustily, while the others looked on and admired. Then John Serve took it and puffed a little, and Wood Pinckney, too, till it almost went out. But Henry worked it up again, and got it in good order.

"Now you try, boys." And he held it out to the little fellows. "Come, don't be afraid," he said, as they hesitated.

And the others chimed in with, "I wouldn't be a sissy. He thinks his mother will spank him. Give him a sugar plum."

"What did you come down here for, if you did not mean to try it?" said Henry with a coarse sneer.

This was a clincher, and each little boy in turn took the cigar.

They had watched to good purpose, and Arthur succeeded so well in "making it go" that he was quite proud of his success, and also determined that Rufus and Tom should do as well. The cigar grew smaller as boy after boy took his turn, and with more or less skill blew the smoke or knocked the ashes, when suddenly Rufus said, "Arthur, let's go home."

Something in his voice drew Henry Prince's attention to him. He gave a great "hoarse laugh."

"Sonny's sick, I guess; look at him!"

"Two sonnys, I'll bet," said another, "or three; why, where is Tom?"

And a chorus of jeers from the more hardened reprobates followed our youngsters as they crept off around the board piles.

A deadly paleness had crept over Arthur's fair skin, and an ashy look was creeping over Rufus' darker face as the two boys staggered into their yard. By good luck they reached their attic chamber without being seen, and threw themselves on their trundle-bed.

Ding-a-ding-a-ding! The baby was in her crib, the other little ones abed too, and now the bell rings for the two oldest boys. Arthur and Rufus hear it with a groan.

"I wish we hadn't gone down there, Arthur." "So do I." "Mother always says Hen Prince isn't a good boy to play with." "Well, we know that ourselves. I don't see what we went with those fellows for any way." "I feel awful sick." "So do I." "Do you suppose we are going to die?" And both little heads went sobbing down to their pillows. They were only little boys.

And just as Mrs. Chase was thinking that she must ring that bell again, she heard a feeble voice over the attic banisters, saying, "Mother, please come up here."

"Why, the boys are upstairs and abed," she said to the deacon. "When did they come in? Something must be the matter. I'll go up and see."

Yes, something was the matter,—two little boys deathly sick and full of penitence! Their sin had found them out, and punishment had followed quickly on the pleasant wrong-doing. Between the qualms of nausea and conscience together, they told the tale of their temptation and fall. They clung to their mother while the pains of death got hold upon them. They begged her with tears to pray for forgiveness, and finally gave up their supper. With consciences and stomachs relieved, they were soothed off to sleep, and Mrs. Chase went downstairs and told the deacon all about it.

"They thought they were going to die, and I let them think so," she said grimly.

And did it do any good?—Yes, indeed, it did. To Arthur, as a boy and young man, the smell of tobacco brought up such a vision of that sick night as to destroy the force of the temptation, and now as a man in the fifties, he loathes it still. With Rufus the purpose "to let the thing alone" never faltered in circumstances where thousands of good purposes broke down, for he enlisted at twenty-one. But never again, even through an army experience from Sumter's fall to Lee's surrender, did he touch tobacco, or alcohol either, in any form. He is a deacon himself now, with boys of his own. I wonder how and where they have settled the tobacco question. Not behind Cummings' shop, for that has been gone five and twenty years or more.—Congregationalist.