Woman and her behaviour.

Should women smoke?

The question, in four-inch letters, exhibited on a placard outside a small newsvendor’s shop, caught recently my eye.  The wanderer through London streets is familiar with such-like appeals to his decision: “Should short men marry tall wives?”  “Ought we to cut our hair?”  “Should second cousins kiss?”  Life’s problems appear to be endless.

Personally, I am not worrying myself whether women should smoke or not.  It seems to me a question for the individual woman to decide for herself.  I like women who smoke; I can see no objection to their smoking.  Smoking soothes the nerves.  Women’s nerves occasionally want soothing.  The tiresome idiot who argues that smoking is unwomanly denounces the drinking of tea as unmanly.  He is a wooden-headed person who derives all his ideas from cheap fiction.  The manly man of cheap fiction smokes a pipe and drinks whisky.  That is how we know he is a man.  The womanly woman—well, I always feel I could make a better woman myself out of an old clothes shop and a hair-dresser’s block.

But, as I have said, the question does not impress me as one demanding my particular attention.  I also like the woman who does not smoke.  I have met in my time some very charming women who do not smoke.  It may be a sign of degeneracy, but I am prepared to abdicate my position of woman’s god, leaving her free to lead her own life.