The Council Bluffs nonpareil. [volume] (Council Bluffs [Iowa]) 1857-1867, 1858-05-15

UNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA,
| 1s From the Springfield Republican.
TIMoTHY TITcoM1's LETTERS TO YOUNG
| Afse@s8 3aE& MEN. r. Ea rf-.r= sass
| II is entirely natural for people to form
habits, so that if bad habits are avoided,
the good ones will generally take care Of
themselves. had no intention when l
commenced these letters of saying anything
upon dogmatic theology, but take the lib
erty OF suggesting to those who are up to
this kind Of thing that if there is ANYTHING
that demonstrates total deprayity, it is the
readiness with which young men imbibe bad
habits. have seen original sin in the shape of
short six sticking out of the mouth of q lad
OF ten years. 1t 10 strange what particular
pains boys and young men will take to learn
to do that which will make them miserable,
ruin their health, render them disgusting to
their friends, and damage their reputation.
Some Of the fashionable bad habits of the
day are connected with the use of tobacco.
Here is drug that young man is obliged
to become accustomed to before he can tol-
crate either the taste or the effect of it. II
is rank vegetable poison; and in the unac-
customed animal produces vertigo, faint
ness, and horrible sickness. Yet young
men persevere in the use of it until they can
endure it, and then until they love it. They
! 20 about the streets with their sinking ci-
gars in their mouths, or into society with
breath sufficiently offensive to knock horse
over. They chew tobacco-roll up great
wads of the stuff and ram it into their cheeks
until their faces look like chipmuck's,
crammed with corn. They spit all over
this lower world-on the sidewalk, in the
store, in spittoons that become incorporate
stenches, in pools that the unsuspecting slip
in with disgusting slipperiness that sends
their breakfast sky high, in dark corners of
railroad cars where white skirts in their
unconscious innocence wipe it up, in lecture
rooms and churches, On fences, into stoves
that hiss in anger at the insult. But that
is not all. The disgorging of the quid with
the hand-that is the polite way of doing it
1T beautiful operation. And then the
quids after they are disgorged! They are
found in odd corners--great boluses, bould-
ers, bulbs. Horses stumble over them,
dogs bark at them, children tumble into
them, they poison young shade trees, and
break down the constitutions of sweepers.
Now, young men, just think of the thing.
You are born into this world with sweet
breath. At proper age you acquire good
set of teeth. Perhaps you have sisters or
cousins to kiss, from tender age. You
hope to have q sweetheart or perhaps have
already got one. Now if you dare to insult
one of these blessed creatures by a kiss that
is compound of nicotine, slobber and
putresent exhalation you ought to be shot.
1t is the salute of a skunk. Do you know
that chewing tobacco is a nasty, sinking,
disgusting habit, that its faithful description
would exhaust all the filthy detectives Of the
language and spoil the adectives themselves
for all further use? Yet you ,riH get in the
habit of chewing. You will chew, and
squirt, and calculate those horrible quids,
and make yourselves disgusting to all your
acquaintances. You will smoke cigars and
pipes, until your bedroom or your shop can
not be breathed in, and until your breath is
rank like the breath of foul beast, and
your clothes smell as if they had lain in the
sewer over night, and hung in the barn to
dry. Some of you take snuff-cram the
fiery weed up your nostrils to irrtate that
subtle sense which rarest flowers were made
too feed-in all this working against God,
abusing nature, perverting sense, injuring
health, planting the seeds of disease and
insulting the decencies of life and the noses
| of the world.
So much for the nature of the habit, and
lwould stop here, but for the fact that
am IN earnest. and wish IN r-nsn-. sn-.-,-
motive in my power to prevent young
men from forming the habit, or persuade
them to abandon it. The habit of using
tobacco is expensive. A clerk on modest
salary has no right to be seen with a cigar
in his mouth. Three cigars day, at i've
cents apiece, amount to more than fifty dol
lars a year. Can you afford it? You know
you cannot. You know that to do this you
have either got to run in debt or steal
Therefore, say, that you have no business
to be seen with cigar in you mouth. ltis
presumptive evidence against your moral
character. Did it ever occur to you what
you are, what you are made for, whittier
you are going? That beautiful body of
yours, in whose construction infinite wisdom
exhausted the resources of its ingenuity, is
the temple of a soul that shall live forever,
a companion of angels, q searcher into the
deep things of God, a being allied in es-
sense to the divine. l say the body is the
temple, or the tabernacle, or the tavern, of
such being as this, and what do you think
of stufhng the front door of such a building
full of the most disgusting weeds that you
can find, or setting a slow match to it, or
filling the chimney with snuff? 1t looks to
me more Ike an endeavor to smoke out the
tenant, or to insult him in such manner as
to induce him to quit the premises. You
really ought to be ashamed of such beha-
viOur. A clean mouth, a sweet breath, un-
stained teeth, and inoffensive clothing-are
not these treasures worth preserving? Then
throw away tobacco and all thoughts of it
at once and forever. Be man. Be decent,
and be thankful to me for talking so plainly
to you.
But there are other bad habits besides the
use of tobacco. There is the habit of
using strong drink-not the habit of get
ting drunk, with most young men, but the
habit of taking drink occasionally in its
milder forms, Of playing with small appe-
tite that only needs sufficient playing with to
make you demon or dolt. You think
you are safe. know you are not safe, if
you drink at all; and when you turn up your
noses at the good friends who warn you of
your danger, know you are fool. know
that the grave swallows daily, by scores,
drunkards, every one Of whom thought he
was safe while he was forming his appetite.
But this is old talk. A young man in this
age who forms the habit Of drinking, or puts
himself in danger of forming the habit, is
usually 50 weak that it doesn't pay to save
him. '@ Ns" ~ S-rr.77 Wives" 81
pass by profanity. That is too offensive
and vulgar habit for any man who reads
a respectable newspaper to indulge in. l
pass by this, say, to come to habit more
destructive than any have contemplated.
Young man You who are SO modest in the
presence of women-so polite and amiable;
you who are invited into families where there
are pure and virtuous girls; you who 60 to
church, and seem to be such pattern young
man; you who very possibly neither smoke,
nor chew, nor snuff, nor swear, nor drink
you have one habit ten times worse than all
these put together-a habit that makes you
q whited sepulcher, fair without, but within
full of dead mems bones and all uncleanness.
You have habit of impure thought, that
poisons the, very springs of your life. It
may lead you into laWless indulgences, or it |