I made bold one day to ask her why it was that she smoked, and yet told me not to smoke. She touched herself in the right side, and said, "The doctor tells me to smoke for some trouble here." But she was a very lovely old lady, and I would never write or speak a word that could harm the dear memory of the mother of my mother. At this time, also, her father was living. I remember the old gentleman now, in his red cap, then a wonder to me, but which afterward became very familiar in Constantinople and the East as the Turkish fez. He was very aged, being then well along in the eighties. Every night I used to go up to his room and make him a toddy. He always wanted me to mix this drink for him, as I had learned to make it exactly to his taste. He had the rare consistency never to say anything to me about the immorality of drinking, nor did I ever speak to him about the matter. But one day I asked my grandmother about this "toddy." She touched her left side, and said, "It is for something here." I could not understand it, but here were mysterious "somethings" in my grandmother's right side, and in her father's left side, that nullified the Methodist religious system and set at naught the additional commandments, "Thou shalt not drink," and "Thou shalt not smoke." But the scheme of morality proved a good thing for me, and served to guide me aright in all my wanderings about the world and up and down in it. I think it very good testimony to the soundness and virtue of my moral training that I have wandered around the world four times, have lived in every manner known to man, have been thrown with the most dissolute and the most reckless of mankind, and have passed through almost every vicissitude of fortune, and have never tasted a drop of intoxicating liquor, and have never smoked. I have kept all of the commandments--those of Sinai and those of the Methodists. In my period of wealth and prosperity, I have entertained thousands of men, have seen thousands drinking and drunken at my table--and under it; but I never touched a drop of my own wine or of the wine of others. I have paid a great deal of money for the purchase of all sorts of tobacco, and for all sorts of pipes--narghiles, hookas, chibouks--as presents for others; but never touched tobacco myself in any way. I have been in every rat-hole of the world--but I never touched the rats. It is for these reasons that I am seventy-three years young, and am hale and strong to-day, and living my life over again like a youth once more.