No Vices — Few Virtues
Some one was smoking in the presence of the President, and had complimented him on having no vices—such as drinking or smoking.
“That is a doubtful compliment,” said the host. “I recollect being once outside a coach in Illinois, and a man sitting beside me offered me a. cigar. I told him I had no vices. He said nothing, smoked for some time, and then grunted out:
“‘It’s my experience that folks who have no vices have plaguey few virtues.’”
(Mrs. General Lander—Miss Jean Davenport, of stage life, the original of Dickens’ “Miss Crummies”—must have heard this in the presidential circle, for she would say: “If a man has no petty vices, he has great ones.”)
A later version ascribes the reproof to a brother Kentuckian, also a stage companion, variation sufficient to prove the happening.