Excerpt from The Novels, Tales and Sketches of J. M. Barrie, Vol. 8: My Lady Nicotine, And, Margaret Ogilvy After keeping it locked in my breast for years, however, let me here divulge a dark secret. When I began to write this book I was no smoker. In stead Of having given up the practice most relue tantly as described in these untruthful papers, I was smoking my first pipe gingerly, not because I liked it, but because all my friends smoked, and it seemed unsociable not to smoke with them. I had no pleasure in smoking, my highest ambition was to be able to smoke now and again without apparent effort. How I drifted into writing a book on the subject I cannot remember, but the desire to know both sides was doubtless the reason why I wrote as a slave to tobacco. Oddly enough this assumed character Obtained an influence over me, I read his views with attention and began to see that there must be something in them. By the time he had clearly demonstrated the folly of smoking I was a convert to the practice. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.