For those of you who don’t like to read here is a quick bullet point summation of the article:

• Mark Twain didn’t like his wife cursing because she didn’t “know the tune”. I think this means either she was bad at cursing, or that she didn’t understand why you would curse. Obviously this means that no woman “gets” cursing, thus it is wrong for a woman to curse.
• For a woman, smoking is like cursing. They don’t understand it. They are bad at it. They pout.
• Women are weak and frail, like little children.
• This is proved because when a ship is sinking women and children are let off first.
• Children should not smoke, it’s bad for them.
• Thus women shouldn’t smoke.
• The author likes young boys with their “soft, beautiful faces, as delicate as a womans” and loves the change in their voices which change from “haunting sweetness” to the “bellow of the male animal”.
• If a woman is good at smoking and likes it, that means she’s tough.
• Tough women are bad and should never be allowed to have children.
• I have no idea what the monkey on the front page is about. I don’t even really understand the caption. Are they saying that smoking is bad because a monkey can do it? A monkey can eat, does that mean eating is bad?

What Kind of Girls Smoke?

It’s a Fine, Manly Accomplishment for Women, Don’t You Think? — But What Are the Real Reasons Why Women Should Not Smoke?

By Wainwright Evans
CARTOONS BY G. B. INWOOD

IN Albert Bigelow Paine’s “Life of Mark Twain” the story goes that Mark Twain was given, in moments of strong feeling, to the use of English more vigorous and picturesque than anything to be found in the dictionary. It wasn’t Sunday School English, in fact. All this grieved his wife very much, and she sought by every means to break her distinguished husband of his habit of latitudinarian speech.