In our opening remarks on tobacco, we stated some of the uses of tobacco,
such as killing bugs and lice on plants, vermin on cattle, etc. It
prevents cannibals from eating up our poor sailors; and, in the Mexican
war, it was ascertained that the turkey buzzards would not eat our dead
soldiers who were impregnated with tobacco!
Dean Swift published a pamphlet, in his day, showing how the superfluity
of poor children could be made an article of diet for landlords who had
already consumed the parents' substance. All may not admit that there _is_
a superfluity of children and youth in the larger towns and cities of our
country. A New York paper says that "five thousand young men might leave
New York city without being missed." Now for our argument. "Like begets
like." The lamb feeds upon pure hay or sweet grass. It is the emblem of
purity; it represented Christ. The lion and tiger have _only_ tearing
teeth, and subsist upon animal food, and they are of a wild, ferocious
nature. Man stuffs himself with tobacco poison. It becomes a part of
him,--muscle, blood, bone! Like begets like, and behold the tobacco-user's
children, puny, yellow, pale, scrofulous, rickety, and consumptive. Many
years ago it was estimated that twenty thousand persons died annually in
the United States from the use of tobacco. Nine tenths begin with tobacco
catarrh, go on to consumption, and death.
"The diseased, enfeebled, impaired, and rotten constitution of the parent
is transmitted to the child, which comes into the world an invalid, and
then, being exposed more directly to the poisonous effects of this
pernicious habit of the parent, its struggle for life is exceedingly
short, and in less than twelve months from its birth it sickens, droops,
and dies, and the milkman's adulterated milk, especially in cities, is
often made the scape-goat for this uncleanly, if not sinful habit of the
parent."
If it is true that the wicked mostly make up the tobacco-consumers, you
perceive by this, that like the prisons and gallows, tobacco catches and
kills off the superfluous wicked population and their offspring. The sins
of the parents are visited upon their children, and what a host of puny,
wretched, and wicked little children tobacco helps to rid the world of.
Selah!