206 TOBACCO. 



" From about fifteen to thirty," he wrote, " I am 

 ashamed to say I smoked ; my conscience often 

 upbraiding me, as well as my best earthly friend. 

 Still I made excuses, and my physician, a smoker, 

 helped me to some. So I continued, till once, on 

 board a steamer, a drunken gentleman staggered 

 up to me, exclaiming, f Give me a-a 1-ight, Dr. 

 Cox.' I handed him my cigar. He returned it. 

 I threw it overboard ; and since have never ceased 

 to thank God that I have been enabled to keep my- 

 self from so foul and odious a sin." 



In replying to a letter from Dr. Cox, John 

 Quincy Adams writes : " In nry early youth I was 

 addicted to tobacco, in two of its mysteries, — 

 smoking and chewing. I was warned by a medi- 

 cal friend of the pernicious operation of this habit 

 upon the stomach and the nerves ; and the advice 

 of the physician was fortified by my own experi- 

 ence. More than thirty years have passed away 

 since I deliberately renounced the use of tobacco in 

 all its forms ; and although the resolution was not 

 carried into execution without a struggle of vitiated 

 nature, I never yielded to its impulses. 



"I have often wished that every individual of 

 the human race afflicted with this artificial passion, 

 could prevail on himself to try the experiment 

 which I made ; sure that it would turn every acre 

 of tobacco land into a wheat field, and add five 

 years to the average of human life." 



Prof. Dascomb, of Oberlin, learned to smoke 

 w T hen a boy. His physician, though himself a 



