Graceful smoke-wreaths of this cigar!

George Arnold (1834 - 1865) was New-York-born author and poet. After a brief stint as a portrait painter, he turned his attention to writing. Eventually, he became a contributor to Vanity Fair and The Leader. He was, with Walt Whitman his contemporary, a patron of Pfaffs beer cellar, where, like many of our group, he enjoyed the combination of beer and a cigar. In his unfinished poem "The Two Vaults," Whitman describes Pfaffs thus:

The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse
While on the walk immediately overhead pass the myriad feet of Broadway . . . .

Whitman at Pfaffs enjoying, we may be sure, a beer and a cigar

Arnold is perhaps best known for his humorous pieces, among them, The Jolly Old Pedagogue.

In this posting, however, I have copied Arnold's poem, "Beer." The poem reminds us that we ought to remind ourselves at each herf about the finer things of life, which are not riches, influence, and power, but, rather

O, finer far
Than fame, or riches, are
The graceful smoke-wreathes of this cigar!

Even in the worst of times, bereft of hope and in the sloughs of despond, we ought to remember with Arnold:

What if luck has passed me by?
What if my hopes are dead,—
My pleasures fled?
Have I not still
My fill
Of right good cheer,—
Cigars and beer.

Beer
by George Arnold

HERE,
With my beer
I sit,
While golden moments flit:

Alas!
They pass
Unheeded by:
And, as they fly,
I,
Being dry,
Sit, idly sipping here
My beer.

O, finer far
Than fame, or riches, are
The graceful smoke-wreathes of this cigar!
Why
Should I
Weep, wail, or sigh?
What if luck has passed me by?
What if my hopes are dead,—
My pleasures fled?
Have I not still
My fill
Of right good cheer,—
Cigars and beer.

Go, whining youth,
Forsooth!
Go, weep and wail,
Sigh and grow pale,
Weave melancholy rhymes
On the old times,
Whose joys like shadowy ghosts appear,
But leave me to my beer!
Gold is dross,—
Love is loss,—
So, if I gulp my sorrows down,
Or see them drown
In foamy draughts of old nut-brown,
Then do wear the crown,
Without the cross!

The poem has but one flaw: it suggests that drinking beer obtains for us a certain salvation, but it is a salvation without the cross, which, as every good Catholic knows, is untenable. It may be that drinking is a little respite from the life of Christian discipleship, but we know that we shall not wear the crown without likewise carrying the cross. But beer, cigars, and fellowship can make the burden a little easier for us weak pilgrims. And I have found that those pilgrims who drink and smoke and socialize in moderation seem far more jovial and happy and well-adjusted, than those with Puritanical or Jansenist tendencies who, if they had their way, would prohibit strong drink, smoke, male camaraderie, which are really just forms of human dancing.

--A.M.G.