“You smoke thirty cigarettes a day?”
“Yes, on the average.”
“Are they to blame for your run-down condition?”
“Not in the least. I blame my hard work.”
The physician then took a leech out of a glass jar.
“Let me show you something,” he said. “Bare your arm.”
The cigarette fiend bared his pale arm, and the other laid the lean,
black leech upon it. The leech fell to work busily, its body began to
swell. Then, all of a sudden, a kind of shudder convulsed it, and it
fell to the floor dead.
“That is what your blood did to that leech,” said the physician.
“I guess it wasn’t a healthy leech, any way.”
“Wasn’t healthy, eh? Well, we’ll try again.”
And the physician clapped two leeches on the young man’s thin arm.
“If they both die,” said the patient, “I’ll swear off--or at least,
I’ll cut down to ten a day.”
Even as he spoke, the smaller leech shriveled and dropped on his knee,
dead, and a moment later the larger one fell besides it.
“This is ghastly,” said the young man; “I’m worse than the pestilence
to these leeches.”
“It is the empyreumatic oil in your blood,” said the medical man. “All
cigarette fiends have it.”
“Doc,” said the young man, regarding the three dead leeches
thoughtfully, “I half believe you’re right.”--_Evanston (Illinois)
Index._