A Cigarette-Maker's Romance

The inner room of a tobacconists 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 actors business upon the boards of this world. Some would prefer to take their properties their players 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[Pg 2] 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.