676 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOTJNG 



custom than that of the tobacco habit. There are many 

 things about it worse than the absurd, but this particu- 

 lar feature is in my mind now. The Chinese women 

 have crippled feet, which renders it almost impossible 

 for them to walk; it is not their fault, the deformity is 

 inflicted upon them in childhood. The natives of some 

 barbarous countries are tattooed, the operation inflict- 

 ing upon them great and protracted pain. The natives 

 of some other countries have flattened heads,— a wrong 

 imposed upon them from their infancy. Some African 

 tribes knock out the two upper front teeth of every male, 

 and others have the front teeth filed like those of a saw. 

 There are many other deformities found among sav- 

 ages, but none of them so absurd as the tobacco habit. 



"Here is a minister, possibly a doctor of divinity, 

 smoking a cigar; there is a reason for it, there must 

 be; what is it? Ask him. He will say, 'It's a great 

 pleasure.' Is that true?— No, it's false; it is not in 

 any proper sense a pleasure. Then why does he prac- 

 tice that disgusting habit!— Because it is a necessity 

 to him, not because it's a pleasure. How a necessity? 

 —Because if he could not smoke, he would be in great 

 torment. 



"The hard drinker does not take the alcohol 

 because he likes it, but for the same reason that the 

 tobacco slave takes that drug; viz., if he did not, he 

 would be in agony. The alcoholic slave has brought 

 himself by degrees into his wretched condition, pre- 

 cisely in the same way that the tobacco slave has lost 

 his liberty, but with far more excuse, or rather with 

 far less liability to the contempt of men of independent 

 minds and independent ways of life and action. Why?- 

 —Because all alcoholic drinks can be easily made ex- 

 tremely pleasant to the taste of beginners in the down- 



