244 THE TIM BUNKER PAPEKS. 



morning, and it takes you twice as long to do that chore 

 as it used to. You go into the garden to hoe, and you 

 pay more attention to your pipe than you do to your hoe. 

 You stop and squirt around every cabbage as if it was 

 covered with lice, and you don t do an hour s work in the 

 whole morning. The weeds get a start of the cabbage, 

 and your garden looks well, I can t compare it to any 

 thing else but Seth Twiggs in all the world weedy. You 

 go into the field to work on the tobacco, and the worms 

 get the start of you, arid what the worms don t kill, the 

 weeds smother, so that your tobacco fields look worse 

 than your garden. I wouldn t have a man on my farm 

 that used to tobacco, at half wages. Now maybe you 

 can see that I don t use tobacco, because you do.&quot; 



&quot; Yes, I see,&quot; said Seth, &quot; and Parson Spooner couldn t 

 have said it better. This has been a dreadful season for 

 weeds.&quot; 



&quot; Season !&quot; I continued, &quot; don t lay it to the rainy sea 

 son. This thing grows upon you, and laziness goes down 

 into your bones, as smoke goes up into the heavens. You 

 go about dreaming you re making a great stir, and when 

 night comes you find next to nothing done. Tobacco, like 

 wine, is a mocker, and if a man don t want to be befooled, 

 he d better not touch it. That is my opinion on tobacco 

 as illustrated in the life and services of Seth Twiggs, the 

 smoker.&quot; 



Then, to come to the question in the abstract, it is 

 nasty; there is no other word that just expresses it. 

 Don t a man belong by nature to the clean beasts, and 

 what right have I to make myself a nuisance among my 

 kind ? It is offensive to every sense. Look into the 

 smoking room of a hotel, or a steamboat, and was there 

 ever a stable fouler? splashes of juice, ejected quids, 

 cigar stumps, and a reek &quot; that smells to heaven.&quot; Wont 

 the world be foul enough without my joining the smokers 

 and chew ere? 



