The Portland daily press., 1876-04-25
A Frightfnl EXamnIe.

When c. d. Lothrop of Amherst was first
accused of fhorse-whipping his wife and starv-
ing his children the greater number of those
who knew him were shocked and incredu-
lous. They could not bring themselves TO
believe that he, man of education and liv-
ing in an enlightened community, could be
guilty ofthe barbarity of an English laborer
and the meanness of typical miser. But
few who knew him well, who had narro wly
watched his course, were prepared for some
astounding revelation of turpitude. The man
had been notorious for years for his fierce
denunciation and unscrupulous villifcation
of tobacco. He invented monstrous ISLANDERS
against the kindly vegetable. After the man.
ner of his tribe he told stories of men who
dropped dead from indulgence in pipe, of
men who went mad from the effects of a
chew, of men who committed murder while
under the influence of cigar. When Trask
died Lothrop set himself up as the successor
OF that zealot, and his stories grew more i'm
probable and his denuciations more fierce.
Ignoring the fact that the Great Plant be.
AOh6o W phS ootAO idhnhy do buC pOtdtO Ut SCI
it apart as thing accursed among all herbs,
and told wild tales of the results of placing a
drop OF its essential oil upon the tongue of !,
cat-which was no more reasonable than it
would be to decry peaches because they con-
tain prussic acid or salt because it kills hens.
The multitude, who always respect enthusi-
asm no matter how unworthy its object,
looked up to him as one who had the good of
his fellows at heart; but men of philosophi-
cal turn of mind, men who had studied his
tory and human nature, quickly perceived the
drift of his teachings and the bent of his
character. They foresaw in the hard-heart-
edness which would deprive the race of
great comfort and solace the beginnings of
that cruelty which led him to beat his wife,
and in the meanness which objected to the
trfing expense incurred by moderate in
diligence in the trouble-banishing weed the
faint appearances of that miserly spirit
which induced him to half-feed and
halfclothe his children. Once posses
sed of the idea that tobacco was response
BILE for the death of the man who died after
smoking it soon became evident to his unset
tied mind that food was responsible for the
death of the man who died after eating; and
so he consistently and logically starved his
family. Frequent repetition of baseless and
Improbable stories impaired his moral sense
and he soon grew unable to distinguish be-
tween truth and falsehood. His course and
character were but the natural result of his
misdirected education.
Observing men forsaw from the first the
unmistakable result, detested the man, and
that his turpitude would take .
even more pronounced form than it did.
They looked to see him become an independ-
ent in politics and free-thinker in religion.
History had taught them that tobacco
founded the splendid civilizations of the Az
tees and the Quichuas, and that from the
time the white man smoked his first pipe on
the shores of the new continent the world
had begun to make wonderful progress in
knowledge and humanity. They looked up
on the rejection of the holy herb as relapse
into barbarism, and they were not surprised
to see Lothrop falling back into the old wife-
UedtluS cOnultlOH Vi uluu lrOm WHICH the
British laborer is, under the genial influ-
ence of his pipe, slowly emerging. History
had also taught them that haters and.neglec-
ters of tobacco usually come tosome bad end.
Without attempting to multiply examples,
which they could easily have done, they con-
tented themselves by reference in an
cient history to Nero, who never used
tobacco in any form, and in modern to Paul,
Russia's lunatic Gear, who abhorred it.
Against Mr.. Trask they adduced his repre-.
hensible manner of dying of a disease to
which only the persistent user of tobacco is,
according to his teachings, subject. But as
to the manner of his taking.off they were
divided in opinion; some looked upon it as a
sort of recantation, dying confession of |
error, while others regarded it as a Judgment |
of the cloud-compelling Joye. They all how
ever agreed that it was owing to his hostility |
to tobacco, and they unhesitatingly predicted |
bad fortune for his successor.
Nor have they been disappointed. Mr..
Lothrop is a frightful example of the turpi-
tude induced by and the evils which flow
from enmity to the Great Vegetable.