The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-04-05


remove him until be had served four
years. If it is permitted to departed
editors to know what their papers are
saying, we can Imagine the explosion
of wrathful disgust by Horace Greeley
at this display of malice and ignorance
in the paper hep founded.
CHASING THE WILL-O'-THE-WISP.
The lower house Of the Wisconsin
legislature passed, under suspension of
the rules, bill imposing a license of
$500 on dealers in cigarettes, and pro-
hibiting, under penalty of a heavy fine,
sales of them to minors. This improves
on the provisions of our act of 1895 that
punished with fine of $50, or thirty
days in Jail, any one who should sell,
give or furnish to any pupil cigarettes.
cigars or tobacco in any form. And we
apprehend that the Wisconsin statute
will prove exactly as effective as our
own has, or has any Of the other acts
IN other states to prevent boys from
we believe. no case of conviction I'M
der our law. of, if there has, it has
not. deferred boys from getting and
smoking the weed in any form they
prefer
The state Of Washington, some years
ago, under the impact of these rainbow
chasers, prohibited the sale Of cigar
cites, with the sole result that any one
wishing to smoke them mad only to buy
of the tobacconist the tobacco and
paper separately and roll his own cigar
cites. 1t did not lessen the smoking ard
only succeeded in teaching the boys
how to make cigarettes. Should the
Wisconsin phase ofsthe eternal pursuit
of this elusive Wnl-o-the-W isp pass
the senate, no more ready-made cigar
cites will be sold there, for no one
could afford to pay the license; but not
fewer cigarettes win be smoked, prob
ably more, but theywill be homemade.
All such legislation takes no note of
boy nature, or of the immense influ-
ence on it of the% example of men.
There is no boy with any spirit who
will not make extra exertions to in
dulge himself in any pastime, whose
evils he cannot understand if it be
forbidden to him. In the DAYS when
good, pious parents looked on cards as
implements of his Satanic majesty,
their boys covertly played them in the
haymows or garrets, and played the
more persistently because they were
eating forbidden fruit We have no
doubt that, had old Mother Eve been
enjoined to eat Of the fruit of that
tree, instead Of being ordered not to,
she would never have cared to see how
it tasted, and all the tremendous trail
Of direfuI consequences to her descend
ants would have been avoided.
1t may be, or it may not be, that
our remote ancestors were MONKEYS:
but whether the ingeniously sustained
conjecture is correct or not. we DOS
sess their imitativeness in scarcely
diminished force. Boys ambition to be
manlike leads them to initiate mems
habits, and no man who can ever recall
his first cigar fails to recall with it
the swelling pride with which he puffed
from his mouth the evidence, conclu-
sive to him, that he was getting to be
man very fast The resulting expert
ence, Also will have hardly become OBJ
solete in his memory. Even before the
ordinary boy dares attack the pipe or
cigar he dallies with the rattan ana
puffs the acrid smoke with gusto. or
fills a pipe with dried mullen leaves
and plays man. dust as long as grown
men smoke tobacco and find apparent
or real enjoyment in it, just so long
will ambitious kids" initiate them.
unless home training persuades them
out Of it. Surely neither state, nor home
prohibition, nor fines on dealers will
serve to prevent the willful youngsters
from having their way. Wisconsin will
add but one more to her already large
stock of dead-letter laws, should this