The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-03-17
VAZZALEAN'S SCHEME,
A JANUARY 1 SWEAR WHICH
 DIDN'T WORK FIERY VEIL.
The Family Physician, Who is Called In te Diagnose tho Case, hFihSs Things to an Interesting Focus

The Family Physictan, Who is SaiAe"
 In to Diagnose tho Case, Brings
 Things to an Interesting Focus
 "Yes. my dear" said MT. vazzalean, mighty eloquently, a few days before January 1, 1902, to his wife, the time has arrived when I've simply got to quit smoking. There's no further use in my trying to convince myself that tobacco isn't hurting me. It is. It's knocking me out, that's what it's doing. I'm having all kinds of queer fiutter- ings of the heart lately, and my memo rvs getting poor and my dyspepsia worse and I'm as nervous as q cat that's been fished out of a cistern. There's only one thing for me to do, and that's to quit smoking. I'm going to quit. l take my last tobacco Whiff on New Years eve. After that, no more"
 But, my dear" inquired his wife, "do you think you can stop?" with the accent on the can"
 "Well, I can make the biggest stab at quitting you ever saw" he replied, he-
 
 such word as can't in the dictionary of a grown-up man. It won't be any picnic quitting smoking, of course, all ter the years I've been fooling with ci- gars and pipes; but fellow can do any old thing that he puts his mind to- It'll probably bother me a little at first, but I'll get used to the deprivation, and then I'll get my nerve and memory and digestion back where they ought to be. Did you ever stop to think, anyhow, what foolishness smoking is? It's the most 1unatical habit imaginable when you begin to reflect upon it. isn't 1t? Fellow just jabs cigar or pipe into hls face. and draws lot of bitter smoke into his lungs, and then eXhales 1t, and when the smokes about finished he feels heap meaner than when he started, and that's all there is to it. Just habit, that's all. It's pure cussed- ness on the part of us men to smoke we just do it because we know that it's sort O under the ban. Well, no more of it for me. I know when I've got enough. and now that I've got my mind thoroughly made up to stop it l wouldn't smoke gift cigars that cost two dollars apiece after I've rad my final New Year eve smoke"
 vazzalean stopped smoking all right. He found it pretty rough travelling, and he was pretty hard to get along with, but he stayed with his determination for several days before he began to feel internal indications that he was weak ening. The men at his office made 1t pretty hard for him, as mans office mates and other associates invariably do in such circumstances. When he reached his office in the morning they d maliciously lean over his desk and blow rich, fragrant wreaths of Christmas present tin-box smoking tobacco in his direction from their pipes, and then he'd have to grip his chair and grin wanIy and try to think of how they were wantonly destroying their health. When they'd return from their lunch cons they'd unostentatiously but 1nten- tionly for all that, circle around Vazza- lean, blowing the smoke from their nice. long black cigars toward his countenance, and one of them would call Vazzaean's attention to new ci- gar he'd discovered, and hold it under Vazzalean's nose so that he could in hale the smoke directly from the ash; and then Vazzalean's face would look drawn and haggard, and he'd find him. self wondering why, after all man or forty four, who'd been smoking pretty steadily since his eighteenth year. should hastily abandon such source of comparatively harmless pleasure.
 ''Just as likely as not, he found him. self thinking, "all those ailments that thought proceeded from smoking cigars came from lack of exercise and over- eating. maybe, and a sedentary life. I certainly feel a durned sight more mis- erable since I stopped than l did when was smoking like a chimney
 However, the recollection of the elo- uuence he had employed in swearing off in the hearing of his wife restrained him from beginning again. He found his existence joyess enough, especially in the evenings, when he discovered that he could get little good out of his evening paper without the usual ac- compartment of cigar. Several times, in fact, he caught himself star ing blankly at the paper when he had it turned upside down
 Don't you feel much better since you stopped smoking?" his wife would ask him every night as he tried to get his mind on the news of the day.
 tYe-es," he would reply, unconvin- cingly, but she thought that he meant it.
 'Its so nice not to have any old cigar and pipe ashes to clean up, and not to have the curtains smelly with tobacco smoke" she would go on.
 "Uh- huh" he would reply scratching his head refectively
 When Vazzalean got home on Mon- day evening last he found awaiting him a neatly done-up package containing five boxes of cigars, each of them hold ing one hundred smokes They had been sent to him by his uncle from Havana where the old gentleman had made stop in the progress of 8 winter tour. The cigars were fine perfectos beautifully made, tantalizingly fra grant and very choice goods "Gee!" said Vazzalean to himself ''If you'd only got them few months ago!" his wife said, Then you could have smoked them. What shall you do with them, my dear?" ooh, put 'em away and I'll have 'em for my friends when they call,' said vavzalean in an off-hand tone The receipt of those five hundred c-