In purchasing her cigarettes, Sister Sue no longer has to bother with alibis, not here in Williamsport. Stage fright that used to caused her to say, “they’re for my brother,” have given way to, “give me a pack of fags old dear,” and if that doesn’t work, she can use a little stronger language. Clerks behind the tobacco counter give their word that the above is true.

It used to be, they say, the girls would timidly request that they wrap up the tell-tale cigarettes and disappear with her puffs and put them in her vanity case.

Nowadays she is a conspicuous figure at men’s smoke shops. “She likes to smoke, and she doesn’t care who knows,” reports one clerk in a busy drug store. “I don’t offer to buy smokes for her guy anymore. She feels insulted. There was a time when she would be eternally grateful if someone bought her cigarettes so she wouldn’t have to go near the tobacco counter.”

The young flapper is considered a most profitable customer, but now and then older women too, replenish their cigarette stash at the public fount.

“A little old lady with gray hair stopped here once to buy some fags” a Fourth Street cigar dealer said. “She said she was an amateur and wanted to try cigarettes in an attempt to calm her nerves. “Huh, quiet her nerves, quiet her nothing nothin’ I’ll wager she was a veteran smoker. She looked like one.”

Practically all tobacco vendors agree that the feminine cigarette smoker shows “absolutely the worst taste in fags.”