Or a good cigar, Mark Twain might have added, whose portrait invariably has the humorist of a simpler age delicately holding a panatela like a wand leading a pupil's eye to the point.
Beside it being a symbol of power, the cigar Twain most probably smoked was hand-rolled, it's end twisted like the bristly tail of a wild boar.
The art of rolling cigars by hand is not dead...at least not yet, said Fanning, owner of Oakbrook Tobacco Co. at the north end of Oakbrook Center.
And in his 15-year-old store, Fanning keeps alive an anachronism in an age when pseudo cigar-afficionados praise the likes of Jamaican Macanudos...or worse, the legendary Cuban of Havana, a cigar, Fanning said, that today bears no resemblance to the ones before Batista.
Fanning gives no quarter to cigar makers who use machines to roll the tobacco.
"The box says that it's a handmade cigar. What that means is that a machine did the rolling and an old man put on the final leaf as a wrapper," said Fanning.
He explained that modernization has allowed cigar makers to bypass the tedious labor of the past century.
"Back when all cigars were rolled by hand, many cigar factories employed a person to sit in the middle of the room and read aloud books or newspapers to workers sitting on wooden horses rolling one cigar after another."
Machines made cigar rolling quicker, explained Fanning, but also signaled the end of an art he took up 17 years ago as an apprentice to a man he fondly calls a giant.
Fanning's route to antiquity started 11 years after he earned a doctorate in aeronautical engineering and sciences at Purdue University in Indiana.
"I was working for a firm and offered a promotion that would have required my staying an additional five years with the company," he said. Five years is his idea of repaying an employer in kind for a promotion, he explained.
He refused the promotion, returned to Chicago and looked for a way to build a business out of a hobby that started in college when he blended tobacco for fraternity brothers.
"I looked through the Yellow Pages and found Meyer Patur, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who came to Chicago in 1914 from Siberia," said Fanning.
"Meyer was short, had an atrophied leg from Polio and was a man of few words," he recalled. Fanning served a two-year apprenticeship, learning the art of cigar making, and, most important, the meaning of personal service.
"Meyer was old when he started teaching me and had built a loyal following over the years," said Fanning. The old cigar maker's following read like a "Who's Who" of power brokers, politicians and celebrities.
Once, said Fanning, "A woman came into the store to pick up her husbands cigars and I had only rolled 50 of a 150-cigar order.
The look in her eyes was electrifying when I told her that the cigars were for another customer.
"She almost cried, telling me she could not go home without the cigars," he said.
Fanning sold her the cigars, and said he learned a lesson about personal service and loyalty.
A short time later, Fanning bought Patur's cigar business and with it, the secrets of what he said is the best cigar in the world.
"It's in the blend of tobaccos and the technique of manufacture," said Fanning, disclosing only that some of the tobacco comes from Nicaragua, Brazil, Mexico and Connecticut.
The other six tobaccos necessary to produce his cigar are a secret, as well as what is done to the leaf once it arrives at his store.
"The blend of tobaccos in my cigars goes back more than 160 years and was enjoyed by James Smithson, the English scientist and founder of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.," he claimed.
So secret is Fanning's blend of tobacco, that customers are encouraged to keep quiet about it source.
"Neither Meyer nor I encouraged our influential clients to speak about our cigars. Too many people would want them for the wrong reasons.
"They would want the cigar for who smokes it and not for the cigar itself."
The tradition of secrecy remains to this day, with Fanning saying only that he ships cigars to the capitals of many nations.
His skill at rolling cigars has become known by those smokers unhappy with machine rolled cigars that smoke with bitterness and are difficult to draw.
"Machines roll a cigar too tightly and are bitter because of the leaf used," he said.
"My choice of tobacco and the way that it is used is so different from all the others, that many experienced cigar smokers can't decide whether to smoke it or eat it."
It appears that many smokers agree with Fanning, and their patronage has Fanning waking at 2:30 a.m. each day to roll cigars, ending about eight hours later or, as he said, "when the job is done".

The process, he explained, starts with tobacco shipped to him in bales, the leaves brittle and dry.
Different leaves are chosen for their qualities as either filler, binder or wrapper.
Fanning explained that the larger the cigar, the milder it smokes,contrary to people's beliefs. The
art of rolling cigars can be likened to the blending of spirits, both requiring an educated nose and taste buds.
"I'm fortunate that Meyer and I shared the same taste in tobacco; it worked to produce consistent cigars," he said, adding that he can taste the difference in any one of ten tobaccos in a cigar. As Fanning continued his explanation of cigar rolling, a stream of customers entered his store looking for an appropriate Christmas gift.
"Most people buy a good cigar and refrigerated it, thinking they are doing the proper thing to preserve it," said Fanning.
"Nothing could be worse for a cigar. The cigar leaf is the most odiferous absorbing leaf in nature and will pick up all the scents in a refrigerator."
His rolling technique is as old as the blend. The dry tobacco is moistened with an atomizer and wrapped in water-soaked wool coats for three days before it can be rolled.
The stems are removed with a technique so sleight-of- hand that a magician would blush. Another step is required before rolling can begin, and again, Fanning said it is a secret that makes his cigars unique.
"It's the marriage of filler tobacco's that gives a cigar much of it's taste, the remainder coming from the wrapper, which is as fine as silk and filled with flavor," he explained.
The color of the wrappers on Fanning's cigars appear no different from commercial cigars sharing space in the humidor where the tobaccos are kept moist.
"All commercial tobacco growers use pots of burning charcoal or licorice to color the leaves. My tobacco gets it's color through another means," said Fanning.
Once the tobacco reaches the right level of pliability, Fanning rolls each cigar and places it in a press of coconut wood and applies pressure, the end result: a perfectly rolled cigar.
One cigar stands out from the rest with its twisted end, a contrast to the blunt cut of the others.
"I roll this cigar as a connection with the past, when a twisted end was required because matches were not invented until 1834 and a smoker had to use an ember to light his cigar."
The loyalty of Fanning's customers is not swayed by current reports of illness associated with smoking, but he sees drops in his business after a blitz of anti-smoking information like the recent Great American Smokeout.
"The person looking for a cigar to give an uncle or father reacts to anti-smoking information. It usually lasts for a week and people are back in buying cigars and pipe tobacco," said Fanning.
"I don't believe that cigar smoking is bad for a person; I think it's a great relaxer," said Fanning.
"And besides, there are no young people rolling cigars today. They are all old men, well into their 60's."
The art of hand rolling cigars probably will vanish with the deaths of the old masters, explained Fanning, who has taught the art to two people.
"Some years ago, I took on two apprentices who worked at it for awhile and gave it up because of the difficult labor involved and because they discovered there was nothing glamorous in the work," Fanning said.
He will not teach the craft to anyone but a family member and, as a father of five children, hopes that one might want to learn cigar making.
The fragrance of moist tobacco hangs in the air of his store as he writes the name of every cigar buyer on a card and files it away.
"I don't mention my hand rolled cigars to everyone who comes in. If they are serious I will tell them about it and put them on my list," said Fanning.
The list was created because of the demand and now only sells to people who have been referred to him.
During Christmas, he will make an exception and sell to anybody looking for a cigar as a gift.
Fanning is a content man, firmly connected to the past and intends to roll cigars until he drops.
"I don't know of any cigar rollers who died young, and Meyer rolled until he was 93 smoking five cigars a day and died at when he was 97. I plan to live a long time."
Fanning finally mentioned several names on his mailing list, one elderly entertainer who has made a Fanning cigar his trademark as recognizable as his line, "Say good night, Gracie."
He did not reveal the entire list, but a call to Congressman Henry Hyde's office confirmed that he smokes Fanning cigars, enjoying them immensely.
"It really is the best cigar in the world," said the congressman.