Men ought not only to be kind and friendly, but to be judicious in the
way they manifest their regard.
At the camp-fire and dinner of the Eleventh Army Corps in
New York recently, Gen. James Grant Wilson, as reported in
_Tobacco_, told how General Grant became the inveterate smoker
that he was. He said that after the Fort Donelson fight the
newspapers all over the North were filled with the story of how
the silent captain had fought that fight with an unlighted cigar
in his mouth. “Up to that time,” said General Wilson, “General
Grant never smoked more than two cigars a day in his life. When
the people of the North found that their commander evidently
liked cigars, loyal souls from every great Northern city sent
in cigars to Grant’s headquarters until he had piled up in his
tent 20,000 cigars. He felt that it would not be polite to
return them or to give them away, so the only thing to do was to
smoke them. That was the beginning of it, and it ended with the
smoking of something like a bunch of cigars every day.”
(1621)
=Injurious, The, Made Valuable=--See PROFIT FROM PESTS.