Tobacco From A Moral Stand-point |
Go to our jails and penitentiaries and you will find their inmates,
almost to a man, tobacco-eaters and alcohol drinkers. As the chameleon
takes its color from the object it is attached to, so does the mind of
man, from the body it is attached to. No wonder, then, that a brain
poisoned, will suggest poisoned thoughts, criminal thoughts and acts.
O that preachers might know this, or, knowing it, might act on it in
their efforts to regenerate man's moral nature. Let them commence at
the root of evil to remove it. Evil, like a Cancer, while the root
remains the canker grows worse. Mind and body is united in every
effort, if the main spring is weakened so is the stroke. A bitter
fountain can not send forth a pleasant stream.
When we undertake to reform a man the first thing is to see that the
brain is healthy; not poisoned and diseased. For an unhealthy organ
can not perform healthy functions. You might as well try to improve
the sense of smell with the nose stuffed full of snuff, as to try to
improve the moral sense while it is poisoned with the essence of
snuff. Try to change a man's heart that is palpitating with poison and
lusting for more! If you wish to be a successful soul doctor, you must
commence at the seat of all moral diseases; a poisoned and disordered
mind. Take the poison out of him first, and keep it out for at least
thirty days, until the brain can begin to have its natural healthy
action, and then he will arise and walk in dry places seeking rest.
We affirm, and shall prove in the course of our lecture, that tobacco
obtudes and destroys the moral as well as every other sense of the
human intellect. Proof. When you see a habitual tobacco user in the
company of his friends you will see him either squirting his poison
fluid over his friend's hearth, house, floor, and stove, and breathing
his loathsome poisonous breath into the face of his friend, or pouring
his poison smoke into the eyes, nose, and lungs of all present. When
all present are coughing strangling and almost out of breath; they say
please don't smoke any more in the house. Then comes the oft' repeated
Excuse me I did not think. Can a moral man so far intrude upon the
health, happiness and peace, even of a race of cannibals? I did not
think, is an acknowledgment that his thinking faculties are not in
order. That is what we know.
Now, it is no use to tell me that a man who can't think, what he is
doing in small moral and social points of good breeding, with which he
is every day familiar. How much less qualified is he for deep moral
and intellectual reasoning which he is entirely unacquainted with?
Furthermore. If he does think, his refined and gentle humane feelings
are so benumbed as to cause him not to care, it shows his spiritual
nature is too much deadened to teach the spirit of a pure and
undefiled religion which teach kindness love and attention to all men.
A poisoned body, especially when chronic, deadens the nerves and clogs
the intellect, darkens the mind, smokes and blackens the soul to such
an extent he can neither teach or understand as a man ought to do by
nature.
What think you of a preacher of Christ with a cud in his mouth
squirting poison at the souls he is trying to save? Is the thing
possible? Talk of distilling the essence of Christianity through a
poison worm of tobacco! O, thou tobacco-eating hypocrite! Can a body
that is defiled with poison and polluted with the sin of self-abuse be
a fit dwelling place for the Holy Ghost? How can a man who stinks like
a rank tobacco-pipe, call himself a fit vessel to stand before the
Lord to represent God and the Souls of men, to proclaim the word of
God while his tongue is reeking in deadly poison and his brain
befuddled with its influence? O, thou worse than Baalam! Would that
every ass might rebuke thee.
It is a common thing for temperance lecturers to denounce alcohol on
the strength of tobacco, that is, lecture with a cud in their mouths.
Now this is mean. There should be honor among thieves. Don't laugh at
and taunt your brother, wallowing there in the mud, while your own
mouth is full of a thousand times filthier filth. Don't grow poetical
on the drunkard's aspen hand, when your own poisoned nerves will
quiver worse than his if you should abstain from your quid three
hours. You have yet to learn that tobacco produces delirium tremens,
which you so much love to picture to the drunkard, with all the
glowing colors of pandemonium.
Dr. Mussey says he was acquainted with a gentleman in Vermont who
conscientiously abstained from all intoxicating drinks and yet died of
delirium tremens. Dr. Lauren and many other medical writers speak of
similar cases within their knowledge. Many of our best physicians
concur the opinion in that many of the cases of delirium tremens
imputed to alcohol are mostly due to the use of tobacco.
You ought never listen to a self styled temperance-man who lectures a
drinker, with his mouth full of tobacco juice. The drinker if he uses
no tobacco is the most temperate man of the two. It is a gross insult
to an audience to eject on them alcoholic vituperation and nicotianic
expectoration at the same time. That audience should say; first go
reform thy-self thou intemperate SLAVE of poison!
We have no room for the introduction of proof of our assertions on the
evils of tobacco. But if you wish to have an abundance of evidence
that tobacco produces the diseases which we herein mention you will
just please to consult Dr. Lizars, he will furnish you with cases and
proof. Read Dr. Mussey's 'Essay on Tobacco,' published by the American
Tract Society. And here let me ask all who have the good of humanity
at heart, to place this lecture in the hands of every one of your
tobacconized neighbors. The circulation of anti-tobacco and
anti-alcohol tracts will do more good than all other tracts besides.
For those are the root and foundation of almost every disorder of mind
and body, even upon those who never used it: for it is written: I
will visit the sins and iniquities of the fathers upon the children
and upon the children's children, unto the third and fourth
generation, of them that violate the laws of nature and their own
being.
A wise man hath said look not on the wine when it is red. But a wiser
than he hath decreed that they only who seek after wisdom shall find
it, that fools shall be afflicted because of their transgressions, and
that whosoever refuseth instruction shall destroy his own soul.
He that is capable of reflection must perceive that whatever disorders
the nerves disorders the brain and the mind, also the morals, then it
corrupts society, possibly for generations to come. You must also
perceive that Life and Death, Health and Disease, are alike
transmitted with the germ of the unborn being. That a diseased and
poisoned body can not transmit a healthy germ. You see that the seed
of an apple that grew on a hollow tree will never produce a sound
tree. Then why expect an affected and poisoned body and mind, to
produce those that are active and strong?
It is not on the external condition in which you find your self
placed, but on the part which you are to act, that your welfare or
unhappiness, your honor or dishonor, your health or diseases depends.
When beginning to act that part, what can be of greater interest to
you, than to throw off the poison chains of mental slavery, keeping
both mind and body free from such abject servitude. Freedom of mind
and body insures health, long life and happiness. When the whole of
the machinery, mental and physical, is clean, its strength and
elasticity is so much better, its retentiveness is much more vivid and
comprehensive that one is mostly spared the pain of irretrievable
errors.
If instead of exerting reflection in so critical a moment you deliver
yourselves up to levity, sloth and slavery of habit and poison, what
can you expect to follow? Will wisdom tread the path of folly? Can you
thus abuse both the mind and body, and call yourselves unspotted from
the world, or call yourselves the children of a pure God? O thou
spiritual blind guide! Where are you leading the people to by precept
and example? You have led and allowed the nations to walk into the
ditch.
Habit is harder to serve than a king, and its taxes are greater, for
they not only come yearly, but daily and hourly, on body, mind and
pocket. You are bound in her chains and must answer her calls.
O man of sorrow, whose life is interwoven with the ills of the earth!
Could I but speak to you in the language of the truth or had I but
room to draw the picture as it is, I think your reason would revolt at
its use, and break its chains, bidding defiance to the deadly grasp of
its seditious habits.
When you become satisfied that tobacco is injurious to you. If you
have not courage to divorce the habit at once and had rather steal
away from its grasp unconsciously and without the desire for tobacco,
or the use of medicine, just send 50 cts. in money or stamps to the
office of the GOSPEL MONITOR. HANNIBAL, MO. And we will send you the
RULINGS OF NATURE. A printed formula showing how nature in that case
restores her own equilibrium, and throws off the former poison and
prevents the craving of a fresh supply. In clubs of 20 or more, we
will send them for 25 cts. each. The rule is short and easily
understood.
The mind of man is the motive power of the body. There is great
sympathy existing between the mind and body, whatever affects the body
must of necessity affect the mind; versus. Whatever affects the mind
is sure to affect the body. The body is the house that the man lives
in, if the house is damaged in any way the man proper which is the
mind; through sympathy is sure to suffer from such injuries.
The power of the mind over the body both in disease and in health, is
utterly beyond all the modern scientific conceptions. The mind has so
long been clogged and hindered by narcotics and over stimulants, that
it yet remains in its infancy. Every hindrance prevents the growth and
development of the mind. The body may soon attain to its greatest
development, but the mind never reaches its perfection in this sphere.
Age and experience fortifies and strengthens the mind, they give it
greatness and power; every influence possible should be brought to
bear upon the intellect to improve the mind and advance it.--The ages
past have been more to hinder and to cramp the intellect, to hinder
reason and progress than to favor it. But it must be understood now
that mind is capable of getting and bringing information from the
ulter-etherial worlds. Or of mind conversing with mind, even in
separate continents.--Without Telephone, Telegraph, or _Witch-craft_.
(Spiritualism.)
More
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House-boat Arcadia
Scrymgeour had a house-boat called, of course, the _Arcadia_, to which he was so ill-advised as to invite us all at once. He was at that time lying near Cookham, attempting to catch the advent of summer on a canvas, and we were all, unhappily, abl... How Heroes Smoke
On a tiger-skin from the ice-clad regions of the sunless north recline the heroes of Ouida, rose-scented cigars in their mouths; themselves gloriously indolent and disdainful, but perhaps huddled a little too closely together on account of the lim... Jimmy
With the exception of myself, Jimmy Moggridge was no doubt the most silent of the company that met so frequently in my rooms. Just as Marriot's eyebrows rose if the cane chair was not empty when he strode in, Jimmy held that he had a right to the ... Jimmy's Dream
I see before me (said Jimmy, savagely) a court, where I, James Moggridge, am arraigned on a charge of assaulting the editor of the _St. John's Gazette_ so as to cause death. Little interest is manifested in the case. On being arrested I had pleade... Later Victorian Days
When life was all a summer day, And I was under twenty, Three loves were scattered in my way-- And three at once are plenty. Three hearts, if offered with a grace, One thinks not of refusing. The task in this esp... Marriot
I have hinted that Marriot was our sentimental member. He was seldom sentimental until after midnight, and then only when he and I were alone. Why he should have chosen me as the pail into which to pour his troubles I cannot say. I let him talk... Matrimony And Smoking Compared
The circumstances in which I gave up smoking were these: I was a mere bachelor, drifting toward what I now see to be a tragic middle age. I had become so accustomed to smoke issuing from my mouth that I felt incomplete without it; indeed, the ti... My Brother Henry
Strictly speaking I never had a brother Henry, and yet I cannot say that Henry was an impostor. He came into existence in a curious way, and I can think of him now without malice as a child of smoke. The first I heard of Henry was at Pettigrew'... My First Cigar
It was not in my chambers, but three hundred miles further north, that I learned to smoke. I think I may say with confidence that a first cigar was never smoked in such circumstances before. At that time I was a school-boy, living with my bro... My Last Pipe
The night of my last smoke drew near without any demonstration on my part or on that of my friends. I noticed that none of them was now comfortable if left alone with me, and I knew, I cannot tell how, that though they had too much delicacy to ... My Pipes
In a select company of scoffers my brier was known as the Mermaid. The mouth-piece was a cigarette-holder, and months of unwearied practice were required before you found the angle at which the bowl did not drop off. This brings me to one of... My Smoking-table
Had it not been for a bootblack at Charing Cross I should probably never have bought the smoking-table. I had to pass that boy every morning. In vain did I scowl at him, or pass with my head to the side. He always pointed derisively (as I thoug... My Tobacco-pouch
I once knew a lady who said of her husband that he looked nice when sitting with a rug over him. My female relatives seemed to have the same opinion of my tobacco-pouch; for they never saw it, even in my own room, without putting a book or pamp... Not The Arcadia
Those who do not know the Arcadia may have a mixture that their uneducated palate loves, but they are always ready to try other mixtures. The Arcadian, however, will never help himself from an outsider's pouch. Nevertheless, there was one black... Page Six |
stimulus. Alcohol, ever true to its companion, steps in and supplies this artificial stimulus. It is a scientific fact that tobacco is responsible for more drunkards than alcohol. I know from my own experience, that smoking natura... Pettigrew's Dream
My dream (said Pettigrew) contrasts sadly with those of my young friends. They dream of revenge, but my dream is tragic. I see my editor writing my obituary notice. This is how it reads: Mr. Pettigrew, M.A., whose sad death is recorded in anothe... Preface
This is the first attempt to write the history of smoking in this country from the social point of view. There have been many books written about tobacco--F.W. Fairholt's History of Tobacco, 1859, and the Tobacco (1857) of Andrew Steinmetz, are st... Primus
Primus is my brother's eldest son, and he once spent his Easter holidays with me. I did not want him, nor was he anxious to come, but circumstances were too strong for us, and, to be just to Primus, he did his best to show me that I was not in his... Primus To His Uncle
Though we all pretended to be glad when Primus went, we spoke of him briefly at times, and I read his letters aloud at our evening meetings. Here is a series of them from my desk. Primus was now a year and a half older and his spelling had impr... Scrymgeour
Scrymgeour was an artist and a man of means, so proud of his profession that he gave all his pictures fancy prices, and so wealthy that he could have bought them. To him I went when I wanted money--though it must not be thought that I borrowed. In... Signs Of Revival
Some sigh for this and that My wishes don't go far; The world may wag at will, So I have my cigar. THOMAS HOOD. The revival of smoking among those who were most amenable to the dictates of fashion, and among whom c... Smoking By Women
Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon; They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town. ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE, _circa_ 1740. A story is told of Sir Walter Raleigh by John Aubrey which seems to imply that at first women... Smoking In Church
For thy sake, TOBACCO, I Would do anything but die. CHARLES LAMB, _A Farewell to Tobacco._ The use of tobacco in churches forms a curious if short chapter in the social history of smoking. The earliest reference to such a pr... Smoking In The Restoration Period
The Indian weed withered quite Green at noon, cut down at night, Shows thy decay-- All flesh is hay: Thus think, then drink tobacco. GEORGE WITHER (1588-1667). The year 1660 that restored Charles II t... Smoking In The Twentieth Century
Sweet when the morn is grey; Sweet, when they've clear'd away Lunch; and at close of day Possibly sweetest. C.S. CALVERLEY. Tobacco is once more triumphant. The cycle of three hundred years is complete. Sin... Smoking Under King William Iii And Queen Anne
Hail! social pipe--thou foe of care, Companion of my elbow-chair; As forth thy curling fumes arise, They seem an evening sacrifice-- An offering to my Maker's praise, For all His benefits and grace. SIR SAMUEL ... Smoking Unfashionable: Early Georgian Days
Lord Fopling smokes not--for his teeth afraid; Sir Tawdry smokes not--for he wears brocade. ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE, _circa_ 1740. With the reign of Queen Anne tobacco had entered on a period, destined to be of long duration, w... Smoking Unfashionable: Later Georgian Days
Says the Pipe to the Snuff-box, I can't understand What the ladies and gentlemen see in your face, That you are in fashion all over the land, And I am so much fallen into disgrace. WILLIAM COWPER. (From a letter... The Arcadia Mixture
Darkness comes, and with it the porter to light our stair gas. He vanishes into his box. Already the inn is so quiet that the tap of a pipe on a window-sill startles all the sparrows in the quadrangle. The men on my stair emerged from their hol... The Arcadia Mixture Again
One day, some weeks after we left Scrymgeour's house-boat, I was alone in my rooms, very busy smoking, when William John entered with a telegram. It was from Scrymgeour, and said, You have got me into a dreadful mess. Come down here first train... The First Pipes Of Tobacco Smoked In England
Before the wine of sunny Rhine, or even Madam Clicquot's, Let all men praise, with loud hurras, this panacea of Nicot's. The debt confess, though none the less they love the grape and barley, Which Frenchmen owe to good Nicot, and En... The Ghost Of Christmas Eve
A few years ago, as some may remember, a startling ghost-paper appeared in the monthly organ of the Society for Haunting Houses. The writer guaranteed the truth of his statement, and even gave the name of the Yorkshire manor-house in which the ... The Grandest Scene In History
Though Scrymgeour only painted in watercolors, I think--I never looked at his pictures--he had one superb idea, which we often advised him to carry out. When he first mentioned it the room became comparatively animated, so much struck were we a... The Murder In The Inn
Sometimes I think it is all a dream, and that I did not really murder the waits. Perhaps they are living still. Yet the scene is very vivid before me, though the affair took place--if it ever did take place--so long ago that I cannot be expected t... The Perils Of Not Smoking
When the Arcadians heard that I had signed an agreement to give up smoking they were first incredulous, then sarcastic, then angry. Instead of coming, as usual, to my room, they went one night in a body to Pettigrew's, and there, as I afterward... The Romance Of A Pipe-cleaner
We continued to visit the _Arcadia_, though only one at a time now, and Gilray, who went most frequently, also remained longest. In other words, he was in love again, and this time she lived at Cookham. Marriot's love affairs I pushed from me w... Tobacco From A Moral Stand-point |
Go to our jails and penitentiaries and you will find their inmates, almost to a man, tobacco-eate... Tobacco Triumphant: Smoking Fashionable And Universal
Tobacco engages Both sexes, all ages, The poor as well as the wealthy; From the court to the cottage, From childhood to dotage, Both those that are sick and the healthy. _Wits' Recreations_, 1640. This... Tobacconists' Signs
I would enjoin every shop to make use of a sign which bears some affinity to the wares in which it deals. ADDISON, _Spectator_, April 2, 1711. Shop-signs were one of the most conspicuous features of the streets of old London... Vanity All Is Vanity
TOBACCO ... What Could He Do?
This was another of Marriot's perplexities of the heart. He had been on the Continent, and I knew from his face, the moment he returned, that I would have a night of him. On the 4th of September, he began, playing agitatedly with my tobacco-... When My Wife Is Asleep And All The House Is Still
Perhaps the heading of this paper will deceive some readers into thinking that I smoke nowadays in camera. It is, I know, a common jest among smokers that such a promise as mine is seldom kept, and I allow that the Arcadians tempt me still. But...