red-and-gilt

Updated: June 9, 2025

When I go into danger that is, into rich people's houses, where, in the nature of things, they will have high-tariff cigars, red-and-gilt girded and nested in a rosewood box along with a damp sponge, cigars which develop a dismal black ash and burn down the side and smell, and will grow hot to the fingers, and will go on growing hotter and hotter, and go on smelling more and more infamously and unendurably the deeper the fire tunnels down inside below the thimbleful of honest tobacco that is in the front end, the furnisher of it praising it all the time and telling you how much the deadly thing cost yes, when I go into that sort of peril I carry my own defense along; I carry my own brand twenty-seven cents a barrel and I live to see my family again.

Mark Twain - What Is Man? and Other Essays