As one who never has smoked or chewed, the writer of this notice is fully in sympathy with the purpose of a book on this subject, written by Margaret Woods Lawrence (Meta Lander), and published by Cupples, Upham & Co. In it you may find a compendium of the moral and social arguments against the weed. Would that tobacco might vanish from parlor and street! How can people stand it?
Nevertheless, weak arguments do not touch the heart of the problem. For instance, tobacco is certainly a costly luxury, but does that prove it our duty to relinquish its use? Coffee, tea, butter, candy, cake, oysters, strawberries, ices, are expensive, and we could get along very well without them. Must we then give them up? Tobacco doubtless induces many a derangement of the system; yet we are surrounded by tobacco-users who are in quite as good physical condition as those who never use it—like myself. The world is not so full of men suffering from these troubles as we might suppose, when we consider the broad statements in this and similar essays, and then note the millions of tobacco-users. Because tobacco is poisonous in some of its forms, this alone does not prove that it should never be used. Potatoes become poisonous under certain conditions. Because a certain article is not good for daily food, it does not follow that it is never to be used as a luxury.
However, I am glad this work has been issued. Sometimes I laid down the book, because it set the nerves on edge with its awful descriptions. More than once I thought: "My boys must read this. Perhaps it will prevent them from ever wanting to smoke or chew." These habits are indeed vile, and they add to the annoyances of life. In the first pulpit I ever entered, there stood a spittoon, and the venerable pastor of the church pushed it along for the theolog to use—who fortunately did not need it. The filthy juice-box beside the sailor at the helm of a ship is equally disgusting. The scent is often terribly disagreeable. Yet when a friend says (in his own house or yours) "Do you mind my smoking?" and you know how much that friend depends upon it, what can you say?
