In her company he was magnanimous; god-like, prodigal; but in his smoking-room he showed himself in his true colors.

Every lady will remember the scene where he rushes to the heroine's home and implores her to return with him to the bedside of his dying wife.

The sudden announcement that his wife--whom he had thought in a good state of health--is dying, is surely enough to startle even a miser out of his niggardliness, much less a hero; and yet what do we find Vasher doing?
The heroine, in frantic excitement, has to pass through his smoking room, and on the table she sees--what?
"A half-smoked cigar." He was in the middle of it when a servant came to tell him of his wife's dying request; and, before hastening to execute her wishes, he carefully laid what was left of his cigar upon the table--meaning, of course, to relight it when he came back.

Though she did not think so, our heroine's father was a much more remarkable man than Vasher.

He "blew out long, comfortable clouds" that made the whole of his large family "cough and wink again." No ordinary father could do that.
Among my smoking-room favorites is the hero of Miss Adeline Sergeant's story, "Touch and Go." He is a war correspondent; and when he sees a body of the enemy bearing down upon him and the wounded officer whom he has sought to save, he imperturbably offers his companion a cigar.