I am an old smoker, that is past all doubt; but I was a young smoker as
well. I can remember my first smoke as if it was but yesterday. It was a
fine day in June, and I was about twelve years old. Three of us, all at
about the same advanced period of life, felt a noble ambition to show
ourselves men as soon as possible, and we concluded that, while it might
do for girls to spend their money on candies and pies, every boy who had
any self-respect would prefer the manly pleasure of a smoke.
We raised about a quarter among us, and bought three clay pipes and some
tobacco. We began to show our manliness at recess. We got behind the
school-house, into the nook of an old snake fence, and lit our pipes.
The results were terrible. I do not mean the mere flogging we all got
for not being back in school after recess, for in those good old days a
flogging more or less was a thing of no importance. I mean the agony of
head and stomach we endured during this first attempt at manly
enjoyments. I remember how we saw each other getting paler and paler,
how our caps distressed us, how our neckties seemed to choke us, and how
a cold perspiration broke out, how we hung limp and feeble over the
fence, and how we finally lay upon the grass thinking that our last
moments were approaching.
We did not any of us die, however, and in my case at least much good was
accomplished. My ambitious views were checked, and I never could bear
the smell of tobacco for full ten years.
There is plenty of evidence to show that the use of tobacco by boys at
the time when they ought to be growing absolutely stunts their growth.
It undoubtedly hurts their digestion. Dr. Hammond says that tobacco
impairs both sight and hearing, and that he has seen several instances
of boys having their eyes seriously, if not incurably, injured by
smoking.
It should always be borne in mind that many things which a full-grown
man can do without hurting himself may be very harmful to the growing
boy, who requires all his powers to promote his physical development. I
therefore do not say, "Take a vow never to touch tobacco," but I do say,
"Never touch it until you are old enough to know whether you can use it
without injury to yourself."
Whenever you hear anybody speaking in praise of tobacco, you must
remember he is speaking of tobacco and not of cheap cigars. "Young man,"
said an old smoker, "that cigar contains acetic, formic, butyric,
valeric, and proprionic acids, prussic acid, creosote, carbolic acid,
pyrodine, virodine, and cabbagine, and burdockic acid."
The old gentleman was laying it on too heavy, perhaps, for even a bad
cigar. He was not exaggerating, however, if he was speaking of the
modern cigarette. The cigarettes now sold in every cigar store and in
every street consist chiefly of bad paper, bad tobacco, and dirt. Many
of them contain worse ingredients, such as opium. The effect they
produce when used immoderately is much worse than any results of tobacco
smoking.
In the famous Polytechnic School of France, the difference between the
pupils who smoked cigarettes and those who did not was so marked that
the use of tobacco was prohibited in all government schools. At the
Naval School at Annapolis, Commodore Parker was so struck with the evil
that he consulted Dr. Hammond in regard to it. The doctor's reply was
that he had no doubt that the smoking of cigarettes was injurious to the
cadets, for he had constant evidence of the fact in his private
practice.
The paper in which the cheap tobacco is rolled for cigarettes is of poor
quality, producing empyreumatic oil, which contains creosote in large
quantities. The odor they give out is ranker, fouler, and more acrid
than that from a clay pipe. From a cigar to a cigarette the descent is
from the sublime to the ridiculous.
We are not talking, however, about smoking in general, but about this
modern fashion of cigarette smoking by boys. It is far worse than pipes
or cigars. One old smoker who dropped into poetry occasionally wrote,
"Smoke not, ingenuous youth, or if you do,
I recommend clay pipes and 'honey-dew.'"
I would prefer to say, "Smoke not at all, my ingenuous boy; but whatever
you do, smoke no cigarettes." The nicotine will hurt your nervous
system, and by weakening the action of the heart will diminish the force
of the circulation of the blood. Your hands will begin to tremble, your
memory to be affected. You will not be able to enjoy or take part in a
good honest out-of-doors game. You will lose your appetite, as well as
weaken your brain.
Apart from the inferior quality of the tobacco from which cigarettes are
made, the method of smoking them is the most injurious possible. The
smoke, whether inhaled or blown out through the nostrils, produces
dryness in the fine membrane which lines the mouth, the speaking
apparatus at the head of the windpipe becomes enfeebled, and the voice
loses the sweetness and liquidity of its tones. "Every boy," writes Dr.
Sayre, "who desires to become an orator should never smoke a cigarette."
And now last but not least, cigarette smoking makes you look ridiculous,
as it shows at once that you are a novice, and do not know good tobacco
from bad.