Reader, are you given to cigar-smoking? The reason we put the question is, that we should not like to offend you by any thing you might find in our pages indicating a contempt on our part for this silly, and, as we think, vulgar practice. If you be, then, pass over this short article, or as our old Irish schoolmaster used to tell us when we came to a passage which we could not construe, nor he neither, “skip and go on.” But we feel tolerably certain you are not a smoker, or at least a cigar-smoker or exhibiting-street-performer, for we are satisfied that among the lovers of this now fashionable amusement we can count but few as supporters of our little work, or of any other of a mental or literary character--that renowned periodical called Paddy Kelly’s Budget, if it be still in existence, excepted. It is the practice of unidea’d men with unidea’d faces, who puff, not whistle--as the latter is no longer a fashionable amusement--as they go, for want of thought, and as they think to make them look manly and genteel! Well, heaven help their little wit! You think, reader, perhaps, as we ourselves were till lately foolish enough to suppose, that there must be a pleasure in this practice on its own account, like that which madmen feel in being insane. But no such thing. We have discovered that it is anything but an agreeable pastime, and that it is indulged in solely from the love of distinction, which is one of the peculiar characteristics of the human race, and which is so strong in these cigar-smokers, that they actually, in the spirit of martyrs, surrender both their minds, such as they are, and their bodies also, to its influence. Such a desire is not only natural to us, but praiseworthy: it is only the choice of means of gratifying it that is unworthy and even contemptible. It will bear no comparison in point of intellectuality with that of the fashionable dandies of our youthful days, who used to promenade the streets and public places, playing quizzes, that is, flat circular pieces of boxwood suspended on a string by a kind of pulley, and which they kept in a sort of perpetual motion with one or both hands, and sometimes even (great performers) with their mouths; their arms see-sawing up and down, and their heads shaking like those of the Chinese mandarins in the tea shops. This, though perhaps a little grotesque, was a comical mode of attracting notice and obtaining distinction. It was a healthy folly too, and required some human intellect to practise it adroitly. A monkey or a dog, both of whom we have seen expert smokers, could not, we are persuaded, be taught this; it would be beyond their intelligence; and it had a touch of the odd, the gay, and the ridiculous about it, that seemed to harmonize naturally with our national character--and we are not ashamed to confess it, we were ourselves great quizzers in our youth. But the cigar-smoking folly--it is a dull, lifeless, stupid, silent, moping mania, wholly unbecoming an Irishman, and inconsistent with the spirit, life, and animation that should be characteristic of youth. Old as we are, we think of taking to quizzing again, but we shall never fall into such a solemn absurdity as smoking for applause. It would not suit our temperament.