Then there is another side to smoking. A habit of any kind is a very difficult thing to give up. If you form a habit of taking a cold bath every morning, it is hard to break it. If you form a habit of reading only the best books, it is almost impossible to read anything else. If you form a habit of drinking whiskey, it is quite as difficult, but not much more so, to break that. In like manner the habit of smoking is a difficult thing to break up. I do not believe it is any easier to get into the habit of smoking than it is to get into the habit of taking a cold bath every morning. Each is a habit, and only becomes injurious, and then _does_ become injurious, when it grows stronger than your own will. Yet the cold bath may not be healthy any more than is the smoking. Therefore if you have any ambition of any kind to keep yourself in physical condition do not smoke, or do anything that will injure your physical condition. If, however, you decide to take up smoking for one reason or another if it does not injure you physically, the smoking itself may be perfectly right and proper. When, however, you grow to feel that at certain times in the day you _must_ smoke, then the thing is bad, and should be stopped at once. In other words, smoking is not an offence against the Bible, as some people seem to think, but it may, and often is, an offence against health. Whenever health is endangered by it, therefore, keep clear of it. THE STORY OF THE ARMY MULE'S LAST KICK. There was an experiment tried at a Western fort many years ago, the results of which were never recorded at the War Department. The story is somewhat as follows: One windy afternoon the Colonel, a fat pudgy little fellow, but a capital Indian-fighter, one of his captains, a long, lanky New-Englander, with whiskers and a drawl, and one of the sergeants were conversing together, every now and then glancing furtively at a solitary mule that was silently wearing the grass off the earth with his mouth. "Waal, Colonel," drawled the Captain, "I like your scheme, and I reckon I'd try--" But just then the mule reached out with one of his hind legs in the direction of the talker in such an exceedingly suggestive manner that the Captain hastily backed into the Colonel. The Sergeant prevented the two men of war from falling by putting his shoulder to them, which position made the three look like an Egyptian pyramid, minus the sphinx--unless you included the mule for that purpose. The Colonel's idea was that gun-carriages were useless in Indian fights, and if a howitzer were strapped upon an army mule's back, with the muzzle towards the tail, and loaded with ball-cartridge, the results that would accrue would be disastrous for the Indians.