"Moral Statistician." — I don't want any of your statis- 

 tics ; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate 

 your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much 

 a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is im- 

 paired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in 

 the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice 

 of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking 

 coffee ; and in playing billiards occasionally ; and in taking 

 a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. etc. And you are always 

 figuring out how many women have been burned to death 

 because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops, 

 etc. etc. etc. You never see more than one side of the 

 question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in 

 America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your 

 theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old 

 Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutch- 

 men both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and 

 fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much 

 solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from 

 smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times 

 the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appall- 

 "^ ^tP^^^ ing aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of 

 people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself 

 all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years ; but then what can you do 



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