OBSERVATIONS ON SMOKING. 233 



smoker. Like Mithridates, who by degrees ac- 

 customed himself to take poisons, the modern 

 smoker, by force of a habit most disagreeable 

 to him at first, only attempted because it is a 

 fashion to smoke, and only persevered in at last 

 because it has become a habit, can smoke his 

 dozen cigars at a sitting without suffering any 

 inconvenience. Ask the most determined smoker, 

 the most sincere one I would rather say — I 

 mean a person who smokes really because he 

 ~ likes it — and he will candidly acknowledge that 

 his first dozen, aye, his first hundred cigars, were 

 most particularly nauseous and hateful to him, 

 and that it was only by perseverance in a practice 

 at which nature revolted that he acquired the taste 

 for that which at first was so ungrateful to him. 



I have purposely said "sincere smokers," 

 because I know well there are many insincere 

 smokers — persons who smoke because others do, 

 whilst in their hearts they detest it, and can 

 scarcely conceal the giddiness and inconvenience 

 it occasions to them. 



If persons really like smoking, let them smoke 

 by all means. I do not find fault with those to 

 whom it is a necessary of life or a luxury; but 



