680 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOUNG 



now abandon the habit. A friend of mine was a to- 

 bacco slave for many years, and had made frequent vain 

 attempts to emancipate himself. At last, he resolved 

 that, come what might, he would be a wretched slave 

 to tobacco no longer. He told me afterward that the 

 struggle with the habit was more fearful than he could 

 describe, and added that all the money in the Bank of 

 England would not tempt him to endure the like again. 



^'Can a smoker be an honest and honorable man"? 

 Can he! I do not answer, I ask the question. In the 

 street, on steamboats, in public places, in railway cars, 

 everywhere, in fact, except in smoking cars or in smok- 

 ing rooms, we have a right, all of us, to the free, fresh, 

 pure air. This is as much our right as the purse in 

 our pocket. No one has more right to take it from us 

 than he has to pick our pockets. Has he! I ask the 

 question. It's my view that he has not. Am I mis- 

 taken! To pick a pocket is stealing, robbery; what is 

 it to take away the pure air from another, and to put 

 stinking, poisoned air in its place? 



*'To sit beside another at the table, and sprinkle his 

 food with cayenne pepper or cover it with mustard, or 

 flavor it with asafetida,— what would such a procedure 

 be called! What word is there in our language by 

 which to characterize it! How would that differ from 

 infusing a disgusting stench into the air for others to 

 breathe! To flavor or poison another's food in that 

 way would be called an intolerable abomination, and 

 the doing of it would expose the party to a summary 

 expulsion from decent society. But the poisoning of 

 the air which others must breathe is so common a thing 

 to do, so many persons practice it who would not pick 

 a pocket or poison other people's food, that most per- 

 sons do not look upon it in its true light. 



