I cannot pass by this much used and exhilarating weed without some reference to its use, and even abuse, by man. Like all foods we eat, indiscreetly used, it is its abuse, and not so much its guarded use, that concerns us. It is well to approach all such matters with the weapon of honest criticism and scientific investigation, and not with the weapon of the fanatic. The action of tobacco on one not accustomed to its use is that of a powerful depressant. It produces nausea, giddiness, vomiting, and great weakness. A person sick from tobacco is, for the time being, inexpressibly wretched, and the wonder is how any one can renew his acquaintance with the drug after such an experience. Its sole active principle is nicotine. This has a tobacco odor and burning taste. One-thirtysecond of a grain of nicotine will make the average man ill.

Acting on the nervous system, tobacco, in an overdose, will produce convulsions of various forms. Acting on the circulation, it increases or decreases the blood-pressure according to the amount taken into the system. It causes contraction of the pupil of the eye, etc., and prolonged use and increased toleration has a most depressing and serious effect upon the organs of vision.

In medicine tobacco is used to relax spasm, to relieve pain, etc. As a remedy it is not to be trifled with, for it has undoubtedly caused many deaths. Used with children, it is particularly dangerous and should be avoided.

Seeing the effect of such a powerful drug on the normal man, is it not wonderful how it has ever come into such general use without a single attribute to recommend it? The same may be said of alcohol and most other stimulants and depressants. Like most or all poisons, the human system becomes tolerant of them after repeated and increasing doses. See the boy sick from his first smoke. Ask him his opinion of tobacco. See Ik Marvel, revelling in the smoke as it fumes and curls around him, in his "Reveries of a Bachelor." Ask him. Here are the two extremes.

Persistence in the use of one of the vilest weeds in nature, one endowed with one of the most subtle of all poisons as its active principle, brings to man more joy, more consolation, more relief from care and wear and tear than all the really worldly pleasures combined. Aye, but the day of reckoning will come; action and reaction are equal. Every joy thus obtained will be followed by its corresponding sorrow.

"On life's vast ocean diversely we sail. Reason the cord, but passion is the gale."

The unfortunate part of the condition is that we naturally turn to artificial comforters in our race for life and honor and fame, and thus alcohol and tobacco have grown to play their body-burning, soul-consuming parts in the drama of life, and greatly to the injury of weak and faltering man.

It goes without saying that mankind would be far better off had they never heard of tobacco. The question before us now, granting the utter impossibility of doing away with its use, is the possibility of limiting its consumption to our needs and comforts, and not to our injury and undoing. Tobacco is particularly injurious to the young, and we should do all in our power to limit its use to adult age. In all persons suffering from cardiovascular irregularities the use of tobacco should be scrupulously guarded. The so-called tobacco heart is no myth. Persons using tobacco and noting any troubles of their vision should look to tobacco as a possible cause. Tobacco is a serious menace to good eyesight among those who abuse it. Users of tobacco suffering from dyspepsia must look to it as a cause. One who finds himself failing in health from any cause and is conscious of discomfort, should exclude the use of tobacco as a cause, should he be given to it.

As to chewing of tobacco, it is a filthy habit, and I have no defence to offer for it. It is in no respect worthy of any defence or justification, yet it is always with us. One may probably not get the poisonous effects from nicotine so much from chewing tobacco as from smoking it, but his salivary organs are constantly overstimulated, and salivary digestion is both interfered with and weakened. His food makes a bad beginning on its way to proper digestion. The crusade now properly being waged against the spitting habit surely must have a tendency to check the free American citizen in his tobacco chewing. May God speed the day!

As to cigarette smoking and injuries following it, one of the great evils of this form of tobacco using is its practice by boys. The cigarette is handy, cheap, and always ready. As to their adulteration with opium and other narcotics, this is probably not correct. Opium is too dear for such a purpose, and no commercial advantage could come from its use here. I doubt if the same amount of tobacco smoked in cigarettes is any more harmful than the same amount smoked in pipes and cigars. The paper is objectionable for many reasons. The trouble with the cigarette is not the quality, but the quantity. As before said, boys who should not smoke find their temptation in them, and men are apt to overdo the thing, smoke all the time, one after another. A whiff at a cigarette after a meal will do little harm. Keeping up the whiffs indefinitely is where the sin and its consequences come in. Another bad practice is inhaling the smoke. Inhaling the smoke from one cigarette does more damage to the system than the smoking of half a dozen cigarettes without inhaling.

The best rule in life is moderation in all things, and this surely applies to the use of tobacco. The better the quality of the cigar the less poison we probably get from tobacco in nicotine. The better the quality of smoking tobacco, the less poison we probably get in pipe smoking; hence if you do smoke cigars, if you do smoke a pipe, if you do smoke cigarettes, if you do chew tobacco, have as much regard for quality as you have for quantity.