Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1910 — BURMA CIGARETTES. [ARTICLE]

BURMA CIGARETTES.

On* Will Lut a Smoker, or Maybe aa Entire Family, a Day. The American engineer home for a visit from Burma, accepted a proffered cigarette and rolled It gently between hia fingers. "At the risk of seeming ungrateful," he said, "I rise to remark that the specimen you have so kindly tendered me strikes my acquired sense of the fitness of such things as highly inadequate. Merely as to size, I mean. “The cigarette of Burma is a remarkable contrivance, ranging in length from a foot to a foot and a half, an inch in diameter and not unlike a giant firecracker in general shape. If composed wholly of tobacco it would be deadly. As a matter of fact, it contains very little tobacco. It is made of cornhusk or leaves of innocuous plants rolled tight and with shreds of the divine weed between the layers. One will last a smoker for a day, frequently an entire family for a day. "The woman of Burma, the most handsome and intelligent of their sex in the east, smoke these cigarettes habitually. It is something of a shock when the visitor first sees a pretty woman puffing at one of these enormous cylinders. It is still more of a shock if she is carrying a youngster astride her hip in approved native fashion. Between puffs she offers her cigarette to the child, who never refuses the invitation. "As to effect, the Burmese cigarettes are practically harmless. As to flavor, they are insipid and unpleasant”— New York Herald.