An excellent thing it is, when you get it genuine--none of your coarse
Whitechapel abominations, but a veritable satin-skinned, brown Indian
beauty; smooth and firm to the touch, and full-flavoured to the taste;
such a one as would be worth a Jewess' eye, with a glass of tawny Port.
But the gratification that we have been wont to derive from our real
Manilla has been sadly disturbed of late by a circumstance which has
caused a dreadful schism in the smoking world, and has agitated every
divan in the metropolis to its very centre. The question is, "Whether
should a cheroot be smoked by the great or the small end?" On this
apparently trivial subject the great body of cheroot smokers have taken
different sides, and divided themselves, as the Lilliputians did in the
famous egg controversy, into the _Big-endians_ and _Little-endians_. The
dispute has been carried on with great vigour on both sides, and several
ingenious volumes have been already written, proving satisfactorily the
superiority of each system, without however convincing a single individual
of the opposite party. The Tories, we have observed, have as usual seized
on the _big end_ of the argument, while the Whigs have grappled as
resolutely by the _little end_, and are puffing away furiously in each
other's eyes. Heaven knows where the contest will end! For ourselves, we
are content to watch the struggle from our quiet corner, convinced,
whichever end gains the victory, that John Bull will be made to smoke for
it; and when curious people ask us if we be _big-endians_ or
_little-endians_, we answer, that, to oblige all our friends, we smoke our
Manillas at _both ends_.
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