48 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 



by unwashed negroes — without pocket handkerchiefs. 

 But those who do not object to poison cannot be expected 

 to mind dirt.^ 



" Strong drink " used to be thought essential to bodily 

 strength. Masters insisted on their servants drinking it, 

 lest they should be inefficiently served. Even scientists 

 shared the delusion, till working-men put the matter to 

 the proof, and taught their teachers that more work, in the 

 long run, could be done without it. Tobacco, being a 

 modem innovation, has not got this prescriptive praise. 

 Few, whose opinion is worth anything, will maintain that it 

 is essential to health or active duty ; on the contrary, those 

 who are training for various manly exercises declare it to 

 be detrimental. It is said, however, to " minister to a 

 mind diseased," to soothe the troubled nerves, and to en- 

 able a man to do a larger amount of intellectual work. 

 Many literary men smoke, it is true, and the smoke-loving 

 Germans have been famous for their industry as scholars ; 

 but it does not follow that they might not have been 

 stronger in mind without it. We have been told by some, 

 who profess scarcely to smoke at all, that when they are 

 exhausted by study or composition, a few whiffs will quite 

 revive them, and enable them to pursue their work. 

 Moderate drinkers tell us the same about wine. But we 



1 A writer in the " New York Tribune " states that five eighths 

 of the cigars sold in New York as imported articles are made in 

 squalid abodes in that city. The tobacco is wetted down and 

 is spread on the floor over night in the rooms where the families 

 eat and sleep ; and they tread on it in their domestic operations. 

 In the morning, while it is yet damp and soiled, it is stripped from 

 the stems by the children. This is not pleasant information for 

 the smokers, hut our pity is due to the children who have to live 

 and work in the poisoned atmosphere. 



