"As to smoking stupefying a man's faculties or blunting his energy, that allegation I take to be mainly nonsense. The greatest workers and thinkers of modern times have been inveterate smokers. At the same time, it is idle to deny that smoking to excess weakens the eyesight, impairs the digestion, plays havoc with the nerves, and interferes with the action of the heart. I have been a constant smoker for nearly forty years; but had I my life to live over again I would never touch tobacco in any shape or form. It is to the man who sits all day long at a desk, poring over books and scribbling 'copy,' that smoking is deleterious." _Illustrated London News_, Sep. 30, 1882. BISHOP TEMPLE. "I can testify that since I have given up intoxicating liquors I have felt less weariness in what I have to do. I have been busy ever since I was a little boy, and I therefore know how much I can undertake, and I certainly can testify that since I gave up intoxicating liquors-- although I did not like the giving them up, inasmuch as I rather enjoyed them, when I used them, and inasmuch as I never felt the slightest intention to exceed, nor am I at all among those who cannot take one glass, and only one, but must go on to another--I have certainly found that I am very much the better for it. Whatever arguments I may hear about it, it is impossible for me to escape from the memory of the fact that I have found myself very much better able to work, to write, to read, to speak, and to do whatever I may have to do, ever since I abstained totally and entirely from all intoxicating liquor." Speech at Torquay, Sept 10, 1882. SIR HENRY THOMPSON, F. R. C. S., SURGEON-EXTRAORDINARY TO THE KING OF THE BELGIANS. "I will tell you who can't take alcohol, and that is very important in the present day. Of all the people I know who cannot stand alcohol, it is the brain-workers; and you know it is the brain-workers that are increasing in number, and that the people who do not use their brains are going down, and that is a noteworthy incident in relation to the future. I find that the men who live indoors, who have sedentary habits, who work their nervous systems, and who get irritable tempers, as such people always do, unless they take a large balance of exercise to keep them right (which they rarely do), I say that persons who are living in these fast days get nervous systems more excitable and more irritable than their forefathers, and they cannot bear alcohol so well." Speech at Exeter Hall, Feb. 7, 1877. MR. W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS, F. R. A. S., F. C. S. "I have just read your quotations from the Abbe Moigno, and your own comments thereon. I have tried experiments very similar to those you describe, with exactly the same results; in fact, so far as intellectual work is concerned, I might describe my own experience by direct plagiarism of your words.