The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1868-02-27
From the Atlantic Monthly.
Does IL Pay 10 Smoke?
BY AN OLD SMOKER.

Sl'CS AAai FdIu OuiNeIslty HuuuTeu
thousand dollars, or leaves it million
in his will, to make the sum agh,-a
gift to the trustees, Ito be expended as
they deem best for the general aud per-
manent good of the institution, and not
to neutralize the benefit Of the donors
by conditions dictated by vanity. Yale,
have since learned, is no better off.
At all our colleges, it seems, the pro-
fessors either starve on twelve or fifteen
hundred dollars year, or exc out a
subsistence by takingpupils, or by some
other arduous extra labor. But what
wonder that learning pines, when we
every year waste millions upon millions
of the fund out of which alone learning
con be supported!
1t is so with all high and spiritual
things. How the theatre languishes.
There are but four cities in the United
States where good and complete thea
tire could be sustained. In the great
and wealthy city of New York there
has never been more than one at time,
nor always one. How small, too, the
sale of good books, even those Of a pop
uar cast One of the most interesting
works ever published in the United
States is the "Life of Josiah Quincy"
by his son Edmund Quincy. 1t is not
an abstruse production. The narrative
is easy and flowing, interspersed with
well-told anecdotes of celebrated men,
Washington, Lafayette, J ohm Adams,
John Randolph, Hancock, Jefferson,
and many others. Above all, the book
exhibits and interprets, in the most
agreeable manner, a triumphant human
life; showing how it came to pass that
Josiah Quincy, in this perplexing and
psrilous world, was able to live happily,
healthily, honorably, and usefuly for
ninety-three years! Splendid triumph
of civilization! Ninety-three years of
joyous, dignifed, and beneficial exist
ence! One would have thought that
many thousands ofpeople in the United
States would have hurried to their sew
eral bookstores to bear away, rejoicing,
volume recounting such a marvel, the
explanation of which so nearly concerns
US all. The book has now been pub
lished three months or more, and has
not yet sold more than three thousand
copies! Young men cannot waste their
hard earned money upon three dollar
book. 1t is the price of bundle of
cigars.
Mr.. Henry Ward Beecher has recent
ly told us. in one of his "Ledger" ar
ticles, how he earned his first ten dol
lars, and what he did with it. While
he was student in Amherst he was
invited to deliver a Fourth -of-July
temperance address in BrattIeboro', ,
forty miles distant. His travelling ex-
penses were to be paid; butthe brilliant
scheme occurred to him to walk the
eighty miles, and earn the stage fare by
saving it. He did 80, and received by
mail after his return a ten-dOllar bill, -
the first ten dollars he had ever possess
ed, and the first money he had ever
earned. He instantly gave proof that
the test of persons civilization is the
use he makes of his surplus money.
He spent the whole of it upon an edi-
ton of the works of Edmund Burke,
and carried the volumes to his room, a
happy youth. 1t was not the best
choice, in literature, perhaps but it
was one that marked the civilized being,
and indicated the future instructor of
his species Suppose he had invested
the sum land we all know students who
would make just that use of an unex.
pected ten-dollar billy in a new meer-
Schaum and bag of Lone-jack tobacco!
At the end of his college course he
would have had, probably, a finely col
ored pipe, perhaps the prettiest of his
years but he would not have had that
little 'library of fifty Volumes" the SOL
ace of his coming years of poverty and
fever and ague, always doing their part
toward expanding him from sectarian
into a man of the world, and lifting him
from the slavery of mean country
parish toward the mastersbip of a me-
tropolitan congregation. His was the
very nature to have been quenched by
tobacco. If he had bought pipe that
day, instead of books, he might be at
this moment petty d. d., preaching
safe inanity or silly eccentricity in
some obscure corner of the world, and
going to Europe every FIVE years for
his health.
We all perceive that smoking has
made bold aud rapid encroachments of
late years. 1t is said that the absurdly
situated young man who passes in the
world by the undescriptive name of
the Prince of Wales smokes in draw
ing-rooms in the presence of ladies.
This tale is probably falsei scandalOus
tales respecting conspicuous person are
SO generally false, shat it is always
safest and fairest to reject them as a
matter Of course, unless they rest upon
testimony that ought to convince
jury. Nevertheless, it is true that
smoke is creeping toward the drawing
room, and rolls in clouds where once
it would not have dared to send a Whit.
One reason of this is, that the cigar, and
the pipe too, have "got into literature,"
where thy shed abroad most alluring
odor. That passage, for example, in
"Jane Eyre" where the timid, anxious