56 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 



the comfort and convenience of society at large that it is 

 certain to produce. In this country there is still a 

 majority who do not like smoking or its atmospheric 

 products. They do not like the smell of tobacco, espe- 

 cially if it be bad, which it generally is. They do not like 

 having to breathe the smoke ejected from the mouth of 

 the smoker who has walked past them, or perhaps is 

 standing by. They do not like to enter a room and find 

 that habitual smokers have been there. . . . Smokers 

 monopolize far more than their share of our railway 

 accommodation. Their exigency knows no limits. A 

 smoker must have a compartment in which he enjoys the 

 free exercise of his privilege, even if he have it all to 

 himself, and a dozen people are rushing about the plat- 

 form looking in vain for room, the guard's whistle already 

 sounding. What is worse, he often ignores the carriage 

 provided for his accommodation, and looks aggrieved if, 

 after asking whether you object to smoking, you answer — 

 however mildly — that you do. Tobacco is a powerful 

 drug, administered through the respiratory organs — that 

 is, through the atmosphere ; and as we breathe one 

 another's atmosphere, as it were, in common stock, the 

 smoker administers his drug to all about him, whether 

 they wish it or not. Indifference or apathy with re- 

 gard to the comfort of others is one of the most 

 remarkable effects of tobacco. No other drug will 

 produce anything like it. Neither opium nor intoxicating 

 drink produces such an insensibility. They make a man 

 insensible to his own true interest and his own dignity ; 

 they make hjm foolish or violent ; but they do not put 

 him into such actual antagonism to the human race 

 generally as to make him do constantly, openly, and with 



