Mr. Wilkie Collins smokes
after work, and Mr. James Payn smokes all the time he is working. Mr.
Francillon's consumption of tobacco, and his power of work, are in
almost exact proportion. Similar testimony comes from Mark Twain.
Assuming that the prince of American humorists is not joking, his
experience of cigar-smoking is unique. When Charles Lamb was asked how
he had acquired the art of smoking, he answered, "By toiling after it
as some men toil after virtue." I hope that young smokers will not
conclude that by following the example of Mark Twain, their brain will
become as fertile as his. To them tobacco is bad in any form. It
poisons their blood, stunts their growth, weakens the mind, and makes
them lazy. "It is not easy," says Mr. Ruskin, "to estimate the
demoralizing effect of the cigar on the youth of Europe in enabling
them to pass their time happily in idleness." It has been forbidden at
Annapolis, the Naval School, and at West Point, the Military Academy
of the United States, having been found injurious to the health,
discipline, and power of study of the students. "At Harvard College,"
says Dr. Dio Lewis, "no young man addicted to the use of tobacco has
graduated at the head of his class;" and at the lycees of Douai, Saint
Quentin, and Chambery it has been found that the smokers are inferior
to non-smokers. No public enquiry has yet been made as to the
influence of tobacco upon English youths, but I am assured by several
leading schoolmasters that the smokers are invariably the worst
scholars.
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