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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=510922" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Betrothed</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;You must choose between me and your cigar.&quot;<br> -- BREACH OF PROMISE CASE, CIRCA 1885.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,<br>For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We quarrelled about Havanas -- we fought o'er a good cheroot,<br>And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider a space;<br>In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie's face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Maggie is pretty to look at -- Maggie's a loving lass,<br>But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There's peace in a Larranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay;<br>But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away --</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown --<br>But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o' the town!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Maggie, my wife at fifty -- grey and dour and old --<br>With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,<br>And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar --</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket --<br>With never a new one to light tho' it's charred and black to the socket!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider a while.<br>Here is a mild Manila -- there is a wifely smile.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Which is the better portion -- bondage bought with a ring,<br>Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Counsellors cunning and silent -- comforters true and tried,<br>And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,<br>Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return,<br>With only a Suttee's passion -- to do their duty and burn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,<br>Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main,<br>When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal,<br>So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I will scent 'em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides,<br>And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between<br>The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear,<br>But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light<br>Of stums that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,<br>But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire?<br>Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider anew --<br>Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;<br>And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Light me another Cuba -- I hold to my first-sworn vows.<br>If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for Spouse!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Rudyard+Kipling">Rudyard Kipling</a><div class=q>
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 -- BREACH OF PROMISE CASE, CIRCA 1885.


Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarrelled about Havanas -- we fought o'e..."></div>
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