I think I do not
smoke more than that now; I am quite sure I never smoke less. Once,
when I was fifteen, I ceased from smoking for three months, but I do
not remember whether the effect resulting was good or evil. I repeated
this experiment when I was twenty-two; again I do not remember what
the result was. I repeated the experiment once more, when I was
thirty-four, and ceased from smoking during a year and a half. My
health did not improve, because it was not possible to improve health
which was already perfect. As I never permitted myself to regret this
abstinence, I experienced no sort of inconvenience from it. I wrote
nothing but occasional magazine articles during pastime, find as I
never wrote one except under strong impulse, I observed no lapse of
facility. But by and by I sat down with a contract behind me to write
a book of five or six hundred pages--the book called "Roughing it"--
and then I found myself most seriously obstructed. I was three weeks
writing six chapters. Then I gave up the fight, resumed my three
hundred cigars, burned the six chapters, and wrote the book in three
months, without any bother or difficulty. I find cigar smoking to be
the best of all inspirations for the pen, and, in my particular case,
no sort of detriment to the health. During eight months of the year I
am at home, and that period is my holiday. In it I do nothing but very
occasional miscellaneous work; therefore, three hundred cigars a month
is a sufficient amount to keep my constitution on a firm basis.
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