AGE appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.’ This observation by Francis Bacon isn’t a bad one, but, in my opinion, it doesn’t go quite far enough. There is a fifth instance in which age appears to great advantage and that is cigars.
To be fair to Bacon, tobacco wasn’t always kindly looked upon in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The first European to take up the cigar was Rodrigo de Jerez, who smoked one every day when in the New World and became so fond of them that he brought some back to Spain with him. However, citizens of his hometown, Ayamonte, were so terrified by the sight of smoke issuing from his nostrils and mouth that, not unnaturally, they suspected the work of the Devil. As a result, the Inquisition imprisoned the unfortunate explorer for several years.
A century later, and there was still opposition: Bacon’s great patron James I was the author of a pamphlet entitled A Counterblaste to Tobacco.
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