Santa’s 220 Packs

Like many a U.S. tobacconist, Ben Marx day after day steeled himself against the doelike eyes of suppliant smokers, doled out cigarets with flinty furtiveness. As furtively, his customers searched his Armonk, N.Y. drugstore for cigaret caches. He got a safe. They learned the combination. Finally, last week, he could stand it no longer.

He put on a Santa Claus suit, stuffed 220 packages of cigarets into a pillowcase. Then, chewing his store’s last stick of gum, he strolled the streets of Armonk, distributing packs of cigarets to astonished passersby. But back in his drugstore, he slapped his own pockets in alarm. Morosely he reached into a candy jar, ate a peppermint. He had forgotten to save a smoke for himself.