174 TOBACCO. 



by prayer and works to break up this growing 

 evil." In her own family she had so learned this 

 evil by heart that she could not help lifting up her 

 voice. Are there not many other girls who will 

 join her ranks, and thus present a fair, solid front 

 to the invading foe ? 



" Tobacco is the worst natural curse of modern 

 civilization." Such is the declaration of our aes- 

 thetic seer. 



That the general tendency of this weed is to bring 

 men down to a lower plane will not be denied. 

 The effect on the lower classes themselves is to 

 degrade them still lower, to deaden the sense of 

 their own pitiful condition, and stifle any flickering 

 sparks of ambition. Smoking is called the poor 

 man's solace, because " it makes him contented 

 with his lot." That is one of its very mischiefs. 

 He has no business to be contented. He is living 

 in a miserable tenement, and in the most meagre 

 fashion, when he might be owning a home and 

 educating his children. But there, day in and day 

 out, he sits, selfishly and stupidly smoking his 

 pipe, while his pinched and joyless wife patiently 

 waits on him, and does her best to keep the w T olf 

 from the door. 



As for the refined and scholarly, what but the 

 strange charms of this narcotic could reconcile 

 them to the companionship and the habits to which 

 it not unfrequently degrades them? 



Says Elizur Wright: "A man calling himself a 

 gentleman, with all the outward appointments of 



