Benison or bane?

In Competition No. 2370 you were asked for a poem expressing either approval or disapproval of the habit of smoking. About smoking, as about many things, I am in two minds. On the one hand I smoke three small cigars a day after meals and would never go to dinner with hosts who didn’t offer a smoking room; on the other, I dislike the smell of Virginia tobacco and would never allow anyone to smoke at my table. So I was a pretty impartial judge this week. Given the fact that the Victorian temperance hymns are pale ghosts compared to their red-blooded rivals, traditional drinking songs, I was expecting the Devil to have all the best tunes, but that wasn’t so. The prizewinners — three anti and three pro — get £25 each, and the Cobra Premium beer goes to G.M. Davis for his grim cautionary verses.

Tobacco breeds a foul disease
That racks the chronic smoker.
Observe