The question is, Does it pay these gentlemen to smoke? _They_ know it
does not. It would be gross arrogance in any individual to lift up his
voice in rebuke of so many illustrious persons, but for the fact that
there is scarcely one of them who does not feel that the practice is
wrong, or, at least, absurd. Almost all confirmed smokers will go so
far as to admit that they wish they had never acquired the habit. Few
of them desire their boys to acquire it. None recommend it to other
men. Almost all smokers, who are not Turks, Chinamen, or Indians,
appreciate at once the wisdom of Sir Isaac Newton's reply to one who
asked him why he never smoked a pipe. "Because," said he "I am
unwilling to make to myself any necessities." Nor can any intelligent
smoker doubt that the fumes of tobacco are hostile to the vital
principle. We smokers and ex-smokers all remember how our first cigar
sickened us; we have all experienced various ill effects from what
smokers call "smoking too much"; and very many smokers have, once or
twice in their lives, risen in revolt against their tyrant, given away
their pipes, and lived free men long enough to become conscious that
their whole being had been torpid, and was alive again. No, no! let who
will deny that smoking is unfriendly to life, and friendly to all that
wars upon life, smokers will not question it, unless they are very
ignorant indeed, or very young. It will be of no avail to talk to them
of the man who lived to be a hundred years old and had smoked to excess
for half a century. Smokers have that within which keeps them well in
mind that smoking is pernicious. If there are any smokers who doubt it,
it is the few whom smoke is rapidly killing; such, for example, as the
interesting professional men who smoke an excellent quality of cigars
and "break down" before they are thirty-five. It is not honest,
legitimate hard work that breaks so many people down in the prime of
life. It is bad habits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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