If we will give a very little careful thought to the subject, we will soon see that most everything we do is more or less a matter of habit. Any one can eat in the dark, with a sharp knife at that and never cut his mouth. For some years we have cultivated this habit of finding our mouth; it is one of the very first we acquire, but it is "acquired." I have watched with amusement a baby trying to find his own mouth, - his mouth, at first, is better at finding things than his hands.

Children often learn to suck their thumb. I have a sister who held on to this habit for years, in fact after she was married she could occasionally be caught sucking her thumb - silly, wasn't it!

You have heard of people biting their finger nails, or pulling out their hair, or some other foolish thing, and you have said, "Why don't they stop it?" But if I should suggest something that you have been doing, or you should turn the tables on me and tell me of some peculiar habit of mine, we would both find that it isn't so easy to stop a habit as one might suppose.

Many habits are harmless; they simply open one to ridicule, or make one an object of pity, or furnish a topic for discussion between people who never rise to the point of talking about anything really worth while. I suppose one could suck one's thumb, occasionally, until one was gray-headed, and still have a perfectly good thumb, and be a good sucker - and I don't know as it is any person's particular business but the party affected or effected.

There are some habits, however, that are positively injurious, and the sooner we discover these and eradicate them the better it will be for ourselves and the race.

I could mention a number of bad habits that would be admitted as bad by most of my readers without any argument being necessary: say drinking intoxicating liquors, or smoking opium - you would say, "Of course they are bad!" These, probably, are not your bad habits; you see them in the "other fellow," and you are very frank in your analysis of the other fellow's bad habits.

But suppose I tell you that eating, as commonly indulged in, is a bad habit, you would exclaim, "Preposterous, unthinkable, ridiculous!" And you would at once start in to tell me about the Dutchman who had the horse that he was training to live without hay or oats, and just before he got him completely trained the horse up and died, - and then you would laugh, Ha, Ha! just like that, and feel immensely pleased.

You, perhaps, did not notice that I said "as commonly indulged in," and if you will read it again, it won't sound quite so bad. But we will come to this later.

As for drinking, we will also come to that later on, though I wish to quote here an eminent English physician on this subject (you will note I occasionally quote physicians if they are in line with my own views, otherwise never - I am just like other people in such matters, excepting that I am willing to admit it). Dr. Johnson says: "I have come to the conclusion that more than half of the disease that embitters the middle and later part of life is due to avoidable errors in diet; and more disease is brought on by erroneous habits of eating than from habitual use of alcoholic drink." (Quoted from Milwaukee Health Department Bulletin, a very interesting and helpful little publication sent free to all Milwaukee citizens who ask for it - great idea, that!)

Now let us take up one of these "habits" that is common, and much defended - the smoking habit. It has been stated that the discoverers of America took the report back to the fatherland that they found natives who were "smoking like devils." The fact is, that most of the adopted Americans very soon acquired the habit and have also been "smoking like devils" ever since.

That this is an acquired habit no one will deny. That nature rebels at the point of acquisition, all who have gone through the ordeal will admit. There is a time after the boy smokes his first cigar that he feels very much discouraged, like "throwing up" everything, so to speak. But he knows that Pa and Uncle George both persisted and learned how, and so he heroically sticks to his job, acquires the habit, and lives to tell about it, jokingly. And then, when he grows up and has a little boy of his own, he licks him soundly for doing the same thing he did when a boy.

Did you ever see a smoker who would not tell you that he could "smoke or let it alone, just as he pleased"? And this is so, perhaps, for he generally "pleases to smoke," and seldom "pleases to let it alone." And it is really so, in a deeper sense, in that the soul of man can do whatever it starts out to do, given time enough to accomplish the task. But, oh, what a task it is for a person who has fully acquired the nicotine habit, either smoking, chewing, dipping, or snuffing. To unfasten its grip from their body requires a degree of grit and determination that few slaves of the nicotine habit possess. Any victim of the tobacco habit who does not believe in hell can very soon convince himself that there is such a place, and the location of it will be very close by; all he has to do is to stop his habit - and that's much easier said than done.

"But why stop it?" the nicotine slave remarks, "it is a great pleasure to me; it soothes my tired nerves; it makes the hard places soft, and helps to make life worth living. Why stop it? Besides, it don't hurt me in the least. Of course, I know what 'tobacco heart' is, and how old Bill Jones died of a smokers' cancer and all that, but I am moderate. Why, just look at Farmer Brown; he has smoked all his life, and he is hale and hearty at eighty years old; and there is Peterson and Jacobs and Ostrander, they all smoke and chew and drink, and yet they are alive and seemingly healthy, and well along in years."

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

Death lurks in every glass.
Death Lurks In Every Glass