Part 38

AMY: Please tell it now, mother.

MOTHER: She had often asked him not to use tobacco, but the habit was so strong that he felt that he could not give it up. At last he said one day: “I think you are as much a slave to tea as I am to tobacco. If you will stop drinking tea, I will use no more tobacco.” That put the matter in a new light, and she told him she would think about it. She knew that tea contained a poison, and that it did her no real good, but only harm; so she finally decided to drink it no more. When she next met her friend, she told him that she would use no more tea, and in a short time he left off using tobacco.

ELMER: That must be what the Bible means when it says that we should “provoke one another to good works.”

MOTHER: Yes, that is one way. You know I said when we began talking that tobacco was a thief. I will now tell you of something it steals from the master of the house besides his health.

PERCY: I wonder if it is money. I know that is what thieves almost always try to get.

MOTHER: You guessed it at once. Let us see how much this robber will take from a man if he once lets it into the house. One who is a very moderate smoker will spend about forty dollars a year for cigars. People in England would call that sum seven or eight pounds. Suppose a man should smoke thirty years. Here is an example for you, Amy.

AMY: Twelve hundred dollars. How much would that be in English money?

┌────────┐ │ $40 │ │ 30 │ │ ————— │ │ $1,200 │ └────────┘

MOTHER: About two hundred and forty-six pounds. That would buy him a nice little home, would it not? Or if he was a lover of books, he could get a good library for that sum. And you must remember that this is for a moderate smoker. A merchant said that by saving the money he would have spent for cigars, he laid up twenty-nine thousand dollars, or nearly six thousand pounds. If he had spent it for tobacco, what would he have had for his money?

PERCY: Smoke.

AMY: A dirty mouth and bad breath.

ELMER: A weak heart and weak nerves.

HELEN: He might not have lived to smoke so long, and he might have been a drunkard.

MOTHER: Not very much that is good, for spending such a large sum of money, I must say.

PERCY: I once heard grandmother say that when she saw a man with a lighted cigar, the thought came into her mind, “A fire at one end and a fool at the other.” It does seem foolish to waste money that way. I wish I had some of it that goes up in smoke to send me to college when I am ready to go.

MOTHER: Here is a picture which I think shows this matter in about the right light.

HELEN: Why, what are those people burning in that big fire?

MOTHER: Money, money--nothing but money. Here is a rich man; he is throwing in one thousand dollars; and here is another, who is bringing one hundred pounds. Others are throwing in different sums, some less, some more. See how many young men there are who need that money for something else.

ELMER: And see the workingmen, too.

MOTHER: Yes; and many of them have no homes, and they wear poor clothes, and eat very plain food. They need many things. It may be the wife at home has not had a new dress for years, and the children have no shoes.

AMY: And just see the little boys burning up their money, too!

MOTHER: How very sad! They are only children, and yet they throw away their pennies and dimes. What are all these people getting for their money?

HELEN: Smoke--nothing but smoke.

MOTHER: They get smoke, it is true, but they also get pains and aches. Tobacco laughs as it takes their money, and grows larger and stronger every day.

PERCY: But, mother, can nothing be done to stop their burning up money like that?

MOTHER: You think some one should call out, “Stop, thief!” do you? Perhaps that was what King James, of England, thought; for when people began using it in that country, he wrote a book, in which he said that smoking was “loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs.” The Russian Government tried to put a stop to smoking by saying that if a person were caught using tobacco, his nose should be cut off. Perhaps it was thought that people who abuse smelling that way had no right to have a nose. The sultan of Turkey once put to death those who smoked, or used snuff.

PERCY: I should think such laws would have stopped its use in a little while.

MOTHER: They did not; for people can not be made to do right in that way. They used it more than they had before. I think the best way is for the master of every body-house to say, “I will never, no, never, touch it; and I will do my best to let others know how hurtful it is, so they will not use it.” Many, very many, do not know how much harm tobacco does in the body, nor what a sinful waste of money it causes. They spend it a few pennies at a time, and do not stop to think how much it amounts to in a year or a lifetime. More money is spent for tobacco than for bread. One hundred times as much money goes up in tobacco smoke as is given to missions. Let us do all that we can to prevent this waste. No bird or animal would ever be guilty of taking into its body anything so harmful.