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.

    18/60 page 16
    Of all men, therefore, the soldier is the very last man who could find his account in a practice which lowers the tone of his health, reduces his power of endurance, litters his knapsack, pesters him with a system of flints and tinder, and endangers his efficiency in critical moments. If all the world smoked, still the soldier should abstain. Sailors and other prisoners experience so many dull hours, and possess so many unused faculties, that some cordial haters of tobacco have thought that such persons might be justified in a habit which only lessens what they have in superfluity. In other words, sailors, being in a situation ex¬ tremely unfavourable to spiritual life, ought not merely to yield to the lowering influence of the forecastle, but add to it one more benumbing cir¬ cumstance. On the contrary, they ought to strive mightily against the paralyzing effects of mono¬ tony,—not give up to them, still less aggravate them. There is no reason, in the nature of things, why a sailor, after a three years’ voyage, should not step on shore a man more alert in bodv and mind than */ when he sailed, and all alive to communicate the new knowledge he has acquired and the wonders he has seen. Why should he go round this beautiful world drugged?
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3