My Lady Nicotine E-Book

J.m Barrie

• Herausgeber: J. M. Barrie
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

My Lady Nicotine was published in 1895, nine years before the appearance on the stage in London of the timeless Peter Pan. A hilarious series of anecdotes that Barrie rattles off in these pages, almost with a motto: how to free themselves from the smoke, stop thinking about it. Suspended between dream and re-enactment scenes, a nicotine life is a succession of alternating portraits of old comrades of smoke to their tics, obsessions and rituals, all played under the banner of irony, authentic protagonist of these pages. Finished stories, and riassaporati the old memories, the author's protagonist retreats not about not smoking one step.

Leseprobe

MY LADY NICOTINEA Study in Smoke

by

J. M. Barrie

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CHAPTER I.

MATRIMONY AND SMOKING COMPARED.

The circumstances in which I gave up smoking were these:

I was a mere bachelor, drifting toward what I now see to be a tragic middle age. I had become so accustomed to smoke issuing from my mouth that I felt incomplete without it; indeed, the time came when I could refrain from smoking if doing nothing else, but hardly during the hours of toil. To lay aside my pipe was to find myself soon afterward wandering restlessly round my table. No blind beggar was ever more abjectly led by his dog, or more loath to cut the string.

I am much better without tobacco, and already have a difficulty in sympathizing with the man I used to be. Even to call him up, as it were, and regard him without prejudice is a difficult task, for we forget the old selves on whom we have turned our backs, as we forget a street that has been reconstructed. Does the freed slave always shiver at the crack of a whip? I fancy not, for I recall but dimly, and without acute suffering, the horrors of my smoking days. There were nights when I awoke with a pain at my heart that made me hold my breath. I did not dare move. After perhaps ten minutes of dread, I would shift my position an inch at a time. Less frequently I felt this sting in the daytime, and believed I was dying while my friends were talking to me. I never mentioned these experiences to a human being; indeed, though a medical man was among my companions, I cunningly deceived him on the rare occasions when he questioned me about the amount of tobacco I was consuming weekly. Often in the dark I not only vowed to give up smoking, but wondered why I cared for it. Next morning I went straight from breakfast to my pipe, without the smallest struggle with myself. Latterly I knew, while resolving to break myself of the habit, that I would be better employed trying to sleep. I had elaborate ways of cheating myself, but it became disagreeable to me to know how many ounces of tobacco I was smoking weekly. Often I smoked cigarettes to reduce the number of my cigars.