Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1900-10-29
CIGARETTES.

about to cross a railroad track, and
knew an oncoming train, at full speed,
was just rounding curve liable to
hurl them into eternity, and [ failed
TO warn them Of the impending dan
ger, then the blood of the victims Of
this casualty would be upon my
hands. The world would so construe
it and look aghast at such dire neg
| lect of duty. Now when I see our
dear young lpeople running into dan
gers beside which the mere killing of
the body has no comparison why am
L not the more guilty if fail to sound
the alarm. In viewing the uncertain
ty of life here, under the best condi-
tons apparently, it behooves us not
to fear that which kills the body alone;
but we should fear whatever defaces
or ruins the soul.
Next to hearing volley of
oaths proceeding from young mans
lips is to see the smoke of a cigarette
issuing therefrom, have deepen
ing anxiety that the latter habit is on
| the increase in our midst. After
| meeting three promising young men
| indulging in the use of them, in the
space of as many minutes, the other
| afternoon, the thought of it has
haunted me ever since. Hence this
article.
Now, young men, why do you
suppose many large firms and corpo-
rations will not have young man in
their employ who INDUCES in the hab-
it. It is just this, because there is
danger of his becoming morally ire
sponsible. Gould you picture to
yourselves what it would be to live in
a community of morally irresponsible
beings? Imagination pales before the
horrors of it Then don't run the aw-
full risk of becoming one of them.
Now if you haven't the moral courage,
with Gods help, of quitting the to-
bacco habit entire, why don't you get
some plug tobacco and good clay
pipe and smoke as your fathers
did, knowing what you are smoking?
Cigars are too expensive for work
ing young man, and besides you never
know what impurities are concealed
in them. So the pipe is by far the
least of the three evils. 1t is filthy,
disgusting wasteful, habit, but it is
an American one, and if you do not
indulge in it before you are twenty
there isn't much danger, as far as [
know of your becoming moral wreck,
or an idiot. It might shorten your
days as it did in the case of our brave
General Grant but he died as he lived,
a hero, in full possession of his rea-
soning and intellectual faculties. I
was reading not long since of beau
tiful young lady, twenty two years Of
age in the city of New York, who
became hopelessly insane from the
use of the cigarette. A description
of her condition before, and after her
brain succumbed, was narrowing in
the extreme. I thank heaven our
young ladies are wise enough to let
them alone. hope they will become
still wiser and let the young men who
use them tread the journey of life
alone.
The Rev. g. B. Moody, in a sermon
to young men, at the Congregational
church, few summers ago pictured
the evil as he saw it in the city of
Minneapolis. How any young man
who heard it could ever put another
cigarette to his lips is beyond my con-
ception, unless he were already in the
tolls of the enemy past redemption.
Now, it seems to me we could not
do our young men a greater kindness,
than for every one of us who have
their moral welfare at heart, to warn
them in the home, the shop, and the
street of the pernicious results of this
habit, every time we see them induig-
ing in it. It is the opium in the cigar
cite which makes them so dangerous.
Whenever sec a young man with
one in his mouth straightway, the
picture comes up before me of the
opium dens in the Chinatown of San
Francisco. Down under ground, amid
foul odors and in the dim light, we
saw those human forms curled up on
wooden hunks against the walls,
some of them already stilled, and
others just going off into a state of
maudlin idiocy.
Instead of asking our legislators to
repeal the prohibitory law, I should
ask them to put another upon their
statute books, prohibiting the sale of
the cigarette.
LETTER TO 81. C. PIERCE, BARTON, VT.
Dear Sir: Perhans Won would like to take