A Cigarette-Maker's Romance by F. Marion Crawford

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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

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Set up and electrotyped May, 1893. Reprinted July, 1894.

Norwood Press: J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith. Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

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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

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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

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