CHAPTER X 



TOBACCO CHEWING AND CLEANLINESS 



Last winter, on a very cold day, a friend of mine met 

 a farmer who had just driven in from the country, and he 

 saw a brown icicle a quarter of an inch long hanging from 

 each end of his mustache. It did not make the man look 

 handsome, and it showed what he had been doing. 



Several years ago I knew an old man who had been 

 quite a dandy when he was young, but even then he 

 chewed tobacco. He was so careful and neat about it, 

 however, that no one thought he did it for a moment, 

 not even the woman he married. Still as he grew older 

 he grew careless too, and when I knew him he was such 

 an untidy old man that he showed every one of the 

 chewing signs. His dreadful tobacco breath matched 

 the looks of his few wretched teeth, and the stains on his 

 shirt front looked as if they came from the brown edges 

 of his twisted mouth. An old man who is not tidy is 

 certainly one of the most unattractive things on earth. 



A plug of tobacco is brown and dry, and it is pressed 

 into a square, hard block which men carry around in their 

 pockets. When they hold it in their hands or bite off a 

 piece it does not look as if it could do any more harm than 



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