Does it pay to smoke? / by an old smoker.

  • James Parton
Date:
[1872?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Does it pay to smoke? / by an old smoker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    instead of steeping his senses in forgetfulness over a pipe. He, perhaps, will he taking a contract to build a bridge over the East Elver, about the time when his elderly comrade is buried in a corporation coffin. Of course, there are vigorous and triumphant men who smoke, and there are dull, contented men whq, do not. It is only of the general tendency of the poor man’s pipe that I wish to speak. I mean to say that it tends to make him satisfied with a lot which it is his chief and immediate duty to alleviate. He ought to hate and loathe his tenement-house home; and when he goes to that home in the evening, instead of sitting down in stolid selfishness to smoke, he should be active in giving his wife (who usually has the worst of it) the assistance she needs and deserves. Better the merry song, the cheerful talk, the pleasant stroll, than this dulling of the senses and the brain in smoke. Nobler the conscious misery of such a home, than the artificial lethargy of the pipe. It is an unhandsome thing in this husband to steal out of his vile surroundings into cloudland, and leave his wife and children alone to their noisome desolation. If it does not pay this hod-carrier to smoke, it
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