Sir Benjamin Brodie, a distinguished physician of London, says, "A large
proportion of habitual smokers are rendered lazy and listless, indisposed
to bodily and incapable of much mental exertion. Others suffer from
depression of the spirits, amounting to hypochondriasis, which smoking
relieves for the time, though it aggravates the evil afterwards....
"What will be the result, if this habit be continued by future
generations?"
Tobacco is ruining our nation. Its tendency is to make the individual user
idle, listless, and imbecile. Individuals make up the nation. Those
nations using the most tobacco are the most rapidly deteriorating.
Once the ships of Holland ploughed the waters with a broom at the
mast-head, emblematic of her power to sweep the ocean. Behold her now!
"Her people self-satisfied, content with their pipes, and the glories once
achieved by their grandfathers." Look at the Mexicans, and the lazzaroni
of Italy. "Spain took the lead of civilized nations in the use of tobacco;
but since its introduction into that country, the noble Castilian has
become degenerated, his moral, intellectual, and physical energies
weakened, paralyzed, and debased. The Turks, descendants of the warlike
Saracens, are notoriously known as inveterate smokers. And to-day they are
characterized as an enervated, lazy, worthless, degenerate people."
Go about the shops, and bar-rooms, and billiard-halls of our own
community, and see _our_ lazzaroni. What class do they principally
represent--the active and virtuous, or the idle and vicious?
[Illustration: MY LAZY SMOKING FRIEND.]
A young man greatly addicted to smoking, and who, to my knowledge, was
exceedingly lazy, was seated by the writer's fireside, listless and idle,
save barely drawing slowly in and out the tobacco smoke of an old pipe,
when, after repeated requests of his sister that he should go out to the
shed and bring in some wood to replenish the dying embers, she got out of
patience with him, and exclaimed,--
"There, Ed, you're the laziest fellow I ever saw, sitting there and
smoking till the fire has nearly gone out, on a cold day like this."
"Ugh!" he grunted, and slowly added, "I once heard tell of a lazier boy
than I am, sister."
"How could that be possible? Do tell me," she exclaimed, impatiently.
"Well, you see,"--spitting on the floor,--"when he came to die, he
couldn't do it. He was too lazy to draw his last breath, and they had to
get a corkscrew to draw it for him."
[Illustration: "SHALL I ASSIST YOU TO ALIGHT?"]
[Illustration: WORK FOR TONGUES AND FINGERS.]
"You think it smart and cunning, John,
To use the nauseous weed;
To make your mouth so filthy then,
It were a shame indeed.
To smoke and chew tobacco, John,
Till your teeth are coated brown,
Making a chimney of your nose,
And of yourself a clown,--
"Yes, that would be so cunning, John,--
The girls will love you so;
Your breath will smell so sweet,
They'll want you for a beau.
Because you use tobacco, John,
You think yourself a man;
But the girls will find it out, John,
Disguise it all you can."
"Shall I assist you to alight?" asked one of those nice young men who loaf
about country hotel doors, smoking a villanous cigar, of a buxom country
lass, on arrival of the stage.
"Thank you, sir," said the girl, with irony, and a jump, "but I never
smoke."