CHAPTER IX. Be Free of the Weed

BE FREE OF THE WEED

An old monk was once walking through a forest, with a scholar by his side. He suddenly stopped and pointed to four plants that were close at hand. The first was just beginning to peep above the ground, the second had rooted itself well into the earth, the third was a small shrub, while the fourth was a full-sized tree. Turning to his young companion he said: “Pull up the first.” The boy easily did so. “Now pull up the second.” The youth obeyed, but not so easily. “And now the third.” The boy had to put forth all his strength, and use both arms, before he succeeded in uprooting it. “And now,” said the master, “try your hand upon the fourth.” But although the lad grasped the trunk of the tree in his arms, he scarcely shook its leaves, and found it impossible to tear its roots from the earth. Then the wise old man explained to his scholar the meaning of the four trials.

“This, my son, is just what happens with our bad habits and passions. When they are young and weak, one may, by a little watchfulness over self, easily tear them up; but if we let them cast their roots deep down into our souls, no human power can uproot them. Only the almighty hand of the Creator can pluck them out. For this reason, my boy, watch your first impulses.”

ORIGIN AND POISON OF TOBACCO.

Tobacco-using is frequently the beginning and stepping-stone to other vices. Many who have hesitated in entering a saloon or gambling place have not done so in the use of tobacco.

The origin of tobacco is shrouded in mystery. Mezen was of the opinion that the Chinese used it from antiquity. Dr. Lizards says it existed in Asia from early times. Columbus in his discovery of Cuba tells how he found the natives “carrying with them firebrands, puffing smoke from their mouths and noses, which he supposed to be the way they had of perfuming themselves.”

An ancient tradition relates that there was once a Mohammedan passing along who found a viper lying in his path, almost chilled to death. In pity the Moslem stooped, picked up the serpent, and put it into his bosom to warm it. After a while the viper fully revived and became aware of its situation. He said to the man, “I’m going to bite you.” “O, no! please don’t,” said the man. “If I had not taken you up and warmed you, you would even now have been chilled to death.” The viper replied, “There has been a deadly enmity existing between your race and mine ever since the world began, and by Allah, I am going to bite you.” “Very well,” said the man, “since you have sworn by Allah I will not prevent you, but bite me here on my hand.” He did so, and the man immediately placed the wound to his lips and sucked the venom out and spit it on the ground; and from the place where he spit the poison a little plant sprang up which was—tobacco.

Though this story be not true, yet true it is that tobacco contains a very strong poison, known as nicotine, supposed to be “the juice of cursed Hebanon,” referred to in Hamlet. In one pound of Kentucky and Virginia tobacco, there is, according to Dr. Kellog, an average of three hundred and eighty grains of this poison, which is estimated to kill two hundred and fifty people if applied in its native form. “A single leaf of tobacco dipped in hot water,” said Dr. Coles, “and laid upon the pit of the stomach will produce a powerful effect by mere absorption from the surface. By being applied to a spot where the scarf skin, or external surface of the skin is destroyed, fearful results are liable to follow, and no man can use it without being affected by it.”

HOW TOBACCO INJURES.

Tobacco injures physically. “No less,” said Dr. Shaw, “than eighty diseases arise from it, and twenty-five thousand lives perish annually from it.” A young man asked Wendell Phillips if he should smoke, and that statesman answered: “Certainly not. It is liable to injure the sight, to render the nerves unsteady, to enfeeble the will and enslave the nature to an imperious habit likely to stand in the way of duty to be performed.” Many professors of leading colleges have asserted with figures to prove that boys who begin the tobacco habit are stunted physically and never arise to the normal bodily development.

Tobacco injures mentally. Beecher said, “A man is what he is, not in one part, but all over.” And to have a strong mind, one needs a strong stomach. By the use of tobacco, the stomach is outraged and the brain becomes narcotized, “the intellect of which,” said Prof. Gause, “becomes duller and duller until at last it is painful to make any intellectual effort and one sinks into a sensuous or sensual animal, whose greatest aspiration is to benumb the nerves and befog the intellect.” Such assertions may be ridiculed, but as two and two make four, they are facts. The French government prohibits its use by students in the public schools. The Swiss government prohibits its sale to juniors. During the last fifty years no user of it has graduated from Yale, Harvard or Amherst at the head of his class. Professor Seely, of the Iowa State Normal, said, “I have not met a pupil who is addicted to the habit who will go through a single day’s work and have good lessons. I have had numbers of cases in which they have remained in the same grade for four successive years and then they were not ready to be advanced into the next higher grade.” Dr. Herbert Fisk, of the Northwestern University, Chicago, declared, “A somewhat careful observation of facts has convinced us that students who get low marks do so through the use of tobacco. Last year not one of the boys who used tobacco stood in the first rank of scholarship. This has been the usual rule. One year, out of thirty-three pupils in the first rank of scholarship, there was but one user of tobacco.” Dr. Charles A. Blandchard, President of Wheaton College, said, “Among our former students who are now physicians, the one who has the largest income never touched tobacco. Two are now judges of courts in large cities, with salaries of six or seven thousand dollars. They do not and have not for years used tobacco. Other men, who after graduation, became smokers, do not exhibit the same mental ability. They are, some of them, very able men, but they suffer in mind from the use of tobacco.”

Tobacco injures morally. It heads the list of vices. It is the first step to bad companionship, lewd conversation and liquor drinking. The latter and tobacco-using are twin habits; and do you wonder at it when tobacco is saturated with Jamaica rum; while “plug” tobacco which is composed of licorice, sugar, cabbage, burdock and the refuse of tobacco leaves and other weeds, is often found nailed at the bottom of whiskey barrels? Said Horace Greeley, “Show me a drunkard who does not use tobacco, and I will show you a white blackbird.” Many medical witnesses testify that tobacco using and drinking are kindred habits. When an investigation was made in the State prison at Auburn, N. Y., some years ago, out of six hundred prisoners confined there for crimes committed when they were under the influence of strong drink, five hundred testified that they began their intemperance by the use of tobacco. “In all my travels,” said John Hawkins, “I never saw but one drunkard who did not use tobacco.” “Pupils under the influence of the weed,” said Professor Seely, “are not truthful, practice deception and can not be depended upon. The worst characteristic of the habit is a loss of personal self-respect and of personal regard for the customs and wishes of ladies and gentlemen, especially when among strangers.”

HOW TOBACCO IS USED.

Tobacco is used in two ways, smoking and chewing. Both are filthy, sickening habits, the latter being the more disgusting. For any boy to chew is to exemplify bad manners doubtless influenced by bad morals. A few years ago a call was issued from London, to the scientists of the world to assemble for the discussion of whatever scientific subjects might be presented, every statement to undergo rigid scrutiny. One member said: “Tobacco is not injurious. I have chewed it for fifty years, and my father for sixty years, without perceptible damage. All this cry about it is nonsense.” The chairman answered: “Step forward, sir, and let us canvass this matter thoroughly. How much do you chew?” “I chew regularly three quids per day, of about this size,” cutting off three pieces from his plug. One of these was given to a Russian and another to a French chemist, with “please return the extract.” Then the presiding officer said, “Will any young man unaccustomed to the use of tobacco, chew this third quid before the audience? Here are four pounds ($20) to anyone who will.” A young man stepped forward. The audience was requested to scan his looks, cheeks, eyes and general appearance, before he took it, and closely watch its effects. He soon became pale from sickness, then vomited and fainted before the assembly. The extract from one quid was given to a powerful cat. He flew wildly around, and died in a few minutes. The other extract was put upon the tongue of a premium dog, which uttered a yelp, leaped frantically, laid down and expired.

PIPE, CIGAR AND CIGARETTE.

Smoking tobacco is used in three ways, in the pipe, cigar and cigarette. Neither adds beauty to the face or is conducive to health. It is stated on good authority that Senator Colfax was stricken down in the Senate chamber as the result of excessive smoking and from that time smoked no more. It caused the death of Emperor Frederick through cancer of the lip, killed Henry W. Raymond, of the New York Times, through heart failure, and struck President Orton and General Dakin down with paralysis of the heart. Rousseau says, “Excessive smoking cut short the life of the poet Berat through nervous effect.” It wielded its sceptre over Royer Collard who died in the dawn of a most brilliant career through his loved cigar. It produced cancer of the throat, which ended the life of President Grant and Robert Louis Stevenson. “Out of one hundred and twenty-seven cancers cut from the lips of persons in a short time,” says the Medical Times, “nearly all were from the lips of smokers.” What a dangerous luxuriant weed! How quaintly yet truthfully “Billy” Bray, the Cornish miner, said: “If God intended a man to smoke, He would have placed a chimney at the top of his head to let the smoke out!”

Tobacco smoke is poisonous. It contains one of the deadliest vapors known to man, which so frequently injures the throat. It has also a poisonous oil which secretes itself in the stem of the pipe. Dr. Brodie says that he applied two drops of this oil to the tongue of a cat, which killed it in fifteen minutes. Fontana made a small incision in the leg of a pigeon and paralyzed it by applying a drop of this oil. The reason for so many pale-faced, nervous men can be traced to this cause.

But supposing that smoking a pipe is not injurious, is it not unbecoming a gentleman? Napoleon said, “It was only fit for sluggards.” Gouverneur Morris, being asked if gentlemen smoked in France, replied, “Gentlemen, sir! Gentlemen smoke nowhere!” Horace Mann when addressing the teachers of an Ohio school, said, “The practice is unfit for a scholar or a gentleman.”

To smoke a cigar may be considered more refined than the use of a pipe. But whoever heard of refining a vice? Horace Greeley, when addressing a class of young men on the subject, said, “A cigar is a little roll of tobacco leaves with a fire at one end and a fool at the other.” At which end should refinement begin? The cigar is more directly injurious than the pipe because the user inhales more of the smoke, sucks the weed, and a greater proportion of the poisonous substance is drawn into the mouth and filtered through the system, causing dyspepsia, vitiated taste, congestion of the brain, loss of memory, nervousness and many other diseases.

THE CIGARETTE.

The worst of all, however, is the cigarette. Sometime ago in New York, an Italian boy was brought before a justice as a vagrant. He was charged with picking up cigar stumps from the streets and gutters. To prove this the policeman showed the boy’s basket, half full of stumps, water-soaked and covered with mud. “What do you do with these?” asked his honor. “I sell them to a man for ten cents a pound, to be used in making cigarettes.” This is not all. In the analysis of cigarettes, physicians and chemists have been surprised to find opium, which is used to give a soothing effect, and creates a passion for strong drink. The wrapper warranted to be rice paper is manufactured from filthy scrapings of rag pickers, and is so cheap that a thousand cigarettes can be wrapped at a cost of two cents. By the use of this dangerous thing, thousands of boys have been mentally and morally ruined. A distinguished French physician investigated the effect of cigarette-smoking in thirty-eight boys between the ages of nine and fifteen. Twenty-seven presented distinct symptoms of nicotine poisoning. Twenty-two had serious disorders and a marked appetite for strong drink. Three had heart affection. Eight had very impure blood. Twelve were subject to bleeding of the nose. Ten had disturbed sleep and four had ulceration of the mouth.

Several years ago Representatives Cockran, Cummings and Stahlnecker, of New York, petitioned the Government to suppress cigarettes by imposing an internal revenue tax upon them. During one year they cut clippings from the papers concerning one hundred young men, mostly under sixteen, who died from the effects of these murderous things, while another hundred were consigned to insane asylums for the same cause. Because of such harmful effects Germany has legislated against it. France, West Point and Annapolis have closed their doors to the boy that uses it and more than a score of States in the Union have prohibited their sale.

WHY HE FAILED.

A young man who had failed by only three points in an examination for admission to the marine corps appealed to his representative in Congress for assistance, and together they went to see the Secretary of the Navy, in the hope of securing what is known as a “re-rating” of his papers. “How many more chances do you want?” asked Secretary Long. “This is your third time.” And before the young man had a chance to answer, the Secretary continued, “How do you expect to get along in the world when you smoke so many cigarettes? Your clothes are saturated with their odor. Pull off your gloves and let me see your fingers. There, see how yellow they are!” pointing to the sides of the first and second fingers. Before the young man found his tongue to offer an explanation the Secretary asked if he drank. “Only once in a while,” was his sheepish reply. Mr. Long then invited the Congressman into his private office, and while offering to do everything that he could added, “I am sick of trying to make anything of these boys that are loaded with cigarette smoke and ‘drink once in a while.’ They are about hopeless, it seems to me.” As they left the department building the young man, half apologizing for his poor showing, remarked, “Drinking, my father says, is the bane of the navy.” “I guess it is,” replied the Congressman. “It is the bane everywhere else, and I should think quite likely it would be in the navy.”

My boy, let tobacco in any form alone. It is a dirty, dangerous, expensive habit. It costs this country six hundred and fifty million dollars annually. Worse than the cost, however, is the injury to body, mind and soul. Figures cannot enumerate nor scales estimate the evil it produces. A story is told of a giant who fell in with a company of pigmies. He roared with laughter at their insignificant stature and their magnificent pretensions. He ridiculed with fine scorn and sarcasm their high-sounding threats. When he fell asleep they bound him with innumerable threads and when he awoke he found himself a helpless captive.

My boy, ridicule not the contents of this chapter. They are all important. Heed the warning cry and shun the weed. Many a fair lad has been stunted in development, lost to ambition, sunk to all appeals to honor when once in its grasp; therefore let it alone. The God that made your mouth made the weed, but He did not make the mouth for the tobacco, nor the tobacco for the mouth. If addicted to it, I charge you stop right now.

“To do so, is to succeed—our fight Is waged in Heaven’s approving sight— The smile of God is victory.”