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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    great subject of the physical aids and the physical obstacles to virtue is attracting attention and rising into importance. Our philanthropists have stopped giving tracts to hungry people; at least, they give bread first. It is now a recognized truth, that it takes a certain number of cubic yards for a person to be virtuous in; and that, consequently, in that square mile of New York in which two hun¬ dred and ninety thousand people live, there must be—absolutely must be—an immense number of unvirtuous persons. No human virtue or civilization can long exist where four families live in a room, some of whom take boarders. The way to re¬ generate this New York mile is simply to widen Manhattan Island by building three bridges over the East River, and to shorten the island by making three lines of underground or overground railroad to the upper end of it. We may say, too, there are circles—not many, it is true, but some—in which a man’s religion would not be considered a very valuable acquisition, if, when he had “got” it, he keep on chewing tobacco. Such a flagrant and abominable violation of the Creator’s laws, by a person distinctly professing a special veneration for them, would be ludicrous, if it were not so per¬ nicious.
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