A Cigarette-Makers Romance

A Cigarette-Maker's Romance

Project Gutenberg's A Cigarette-Maker's Romance, by F. Marion
Crawford This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: A Cigarette-Maker's Romance
Author: F. Marion Crawford
Release Date: June 22, 2006 [EBook #18651]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A
CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE ***

Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net

A CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD AUTHOR OF "MR. ISAACS," "DR.
CLAUDIUS," "A ROMAN SINGER" ETC.
New York MACMILLAN AND CO. AND LONDON 1894

All rights reserved
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1890, By F. MARION CRAWFORD
Set up and electrotyped May, 1893. Reprinted July, 1894.
Norwood Press: J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith. Boston, Mass.,
U.S.A.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
1
CHAPTER II.
25
CHAPTER III.
48
CHAPTER IV.
72
CHAPTER V.
96
CHAPTER VI.
121

CHAPTER VII.
145
CHAPTER VIII.
168
CHAPTER IX.
191
CHAPTER X.
214
CHAPTER XI.
240
CHAPTER XII.
264
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

A CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE.
CHAPTER I.
The inner room of a tobacconist's shop is not perhaps the spot which a
writer of fiction would naturally choose as the theatre of his play, nor
does the inventor of pleasant romances, of stirring incident, or moving
love-tales feel himself instinctively inclined to turn to Munich as to the
city of his dreams. On the other hand, it is by no means certain that, if
the choice of a stage for our performance were offered to the most

contented among us, we should be satisfied to speak our parts and go
through our actor's business upon the boards of this world. Some would
prefer to take their properties, their player's crowns and robes, their
aspiring expressions and their finely expressed aspirations before the
audience of a larger planet; others, perhaps the majority, would choose,
with more humility as well as with more common sense, the shadowy
scenery, the softer footlights and the less exigent public of a modest
asteroid, beyond the reach of our earthly haste, of our noisy and
unclean high-roads to honour, of our furious chariot races round the
goals of fame, and, especially, beyond the reach of competition. But we
have no choice. We are in the world and, before we know where we are,
we are on one of the paths which we must traverse in our few score
years between birth and death. Moreover, each man's path leads up to
the theatre on the one side and down from it on the other. The
inexorable manager, Fate, requires that each should go through with his
comedy or his drama, if he be judged worthy of a leading part, with his
scene or his act in another man's piece, if he be fit only to play the
walking gentleman, the dumb footman, or the mechanically trained
supernumerary who does duty by turns as soldier, sailor, courtier,
husbandman, conspirator or red-capped patriot. A few play well, many
play badly, all must appear and the majority are feebly applauded and
loudly hissed. He counts himself great who is received with such an
uproar of clapping and shout of approval as may drown the voice of the
discontented; he is called fortunate who, having missed his cue and
broken down in his words, makes his exit in the triumphant train of the
greater actor upon whom all eyes are turned; he is deemed happy who,
having offended no man, is allowed to depart in peace upon his
downward road. Yet none of these players need pride themselves much
upon their success nor take to heart their failure. Long before most of
them have slipped into the grave which waits at the foot of the hill, and
have been wrapped comfortably in the pleasant earth, their names are
forgotten by those who screamed with pleasure or hooted in disgust at
their performance, their faces are no longer remembered, their great
drama is become an old-fashioned mummery of the past. Why should
they care? Their work is done, they have been rewarded or punished,
paid with praise and gold or mulcted in the sum of their reputation and
estate. Famous or infamous, in honour or in disrepute, in riches or in

poverty, they have reached the end of their time, they are worn out, the
world will have no more of them, they are worthless in the price-scale
of men, they must be buried out of sight and they will be forgotten out
of mind. The beginning is the same for all, and the end also, and as for
the future, who shall tell us upon what basis of higher