THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 245 



And it is a very expensive habit. Your tobacco would 

 cost you thirty dollars a year if you did not raise it, and 

 if you take into account your losses of time under the in 

 fluence of the weed, it costs you four times that sum. 

 You stop to talk with a neighbor, and it makes you long- 

 winded, for your brain is so befuddled that you never 

 know&quot; when you have done. Many a man spends fifty 

 dollars a year for cigars, and if one has a good deal of 

 company, it is mighty easy to use up a hundred. Your 

 friend who smokes never knows when he has enough. 

 He always wants one more of the same sort, and the 

 result is, that your box of Havanas is irone mighty quick, 

 and you can t tell how or where. This makes quite a hole 

 in the income of a man who lives by his hands, or by. his 

 brains. I have brains enough to see that I can t afford it. 



It is very bad for the health. The doctors are all 

 agreed on this, even those who use it. It don t help 

 digestion. It don*t save the teeth. There are better 

 ways of reducing the flesh eating less, for instance. And 

 if the doctors were not all agreed, every man who has his 

 eyes open can see that no man has sound health who uses 

 it in any shape. They call themselves well, but have 

 headaches, indigestion, don t sleep well, are nervous, have 

 the fidgets, or some other complaints. Occasionally they 

 break down under paralysis. Many make complete 

 wrecks of their bodies. Always life is shortened. Now 

 what right have I to make an invalid of myself, and go 

 through life sighing and groaning, when I ought to be 

 well? It is worse for a man s mind than it is for his body. 

 It makes him forgetful. He loses the control of its powers, 

 and can t think connectedly. He forgets the names of 

 persons and places, his own plans, and in short about 

 everything except to smoke. There was our minister, 

 the one we had before Mr. Spooner, smoked himself out 

 of his pulpit. His health failed and his sermons failed 

 worse than his health. They were so foggy that even 



