out so
useless, so filthy, and so injurious an article as tobacco? Many will of
course, excuse themselves by saying as the rum-sellers once did, "If I
don't sell it, others will," This plea did not justify the rum-seller,
neither will it, the dealer in tobacco. Others will say, "I _must_ sell
it, or I shall offend my patrons and lose their custom." But this is not
valid even as a selfish argument. A large and increasing portion of the
community would be glad to patronize traders who sell only the useful
and necessary articles of life. Let respectable traders cease to sell
the article, and respectable customers would soon cease to buy it.

The abominable filthiness of the practice of using tobacco, is a
sufficient argument to induce all decent people to wage war against it.
Stage coaches, rail cars, steamboats, public houses, courts of justice,
halls of legislation, and the temples of God, are all defiled by the
loathsome consumers of this dirty, Indian herb. For the sake of decency,
for the honor of humanity, let the land be purified from this worse than
beastly pollution!

Let none be discouraged from engaging in this reform, because it relates
to a wide-spread and fashionable vice. With a moderate degree of effort
in each town and village, hundreds of thousands might in one year's
time, be induced to pledge themselves against all use of tobacco.

During the last winter I drew up the following pledge, and obtained many
signatures here and in other parts of the state.

ANTI-TOBACCO PLEDGE.

_We, the subscribers, believing that the use of_ TOBACCO,
_in all its forms, is injurious to health, and knowing it to
be a slovenly, sluttish, and disgusting habit, do pledge
ourselves that we will not_ SMOKE _it_, CHEW _it, nor_ SNUFF
_it; and that we will use efforts to persuade those addicted
to the practice, to discontinue its use; and above all, that
we will not traffic in it, nor countenance those who do; and
that we will use our influence to banish the "vile stuff"
from New England, our country, and the world._

A gentleman in North Bridgewater, to whom I lent a pamphlet on this
subject, said he had not read it half through, before he emptied his
pockets of tobacco, and resolved to use no more. He also took a pledge
to circulate among his neighbors.

Another man who had chewed tobacco thirty-three years, abandoned the
habit and remarked that he would not return to it for fifty dollars.

Two benev