o accustomed to smoke issuing from my mouth
that I felt incomplete without it; indeed, the time came when I could
refrain from smoking if doing nothing else, but hardly during the hours
of toil. To lay aside my pipe was to find myself soon afterward
wandering restlessly round my table. No blind beggar was ever more
abjectly led by his dog, or more loath to cut the string.

I am much better without tobacco, and already have a difficulty in
sympathizing with the man I used to be. Even to call him up, as it were,
and regard him without prejudice is a difficult task, for we forget the
old selves on whom we have turned our backs, as we forget a street that
has been reconstructed. Does the freed slave always shiver at the crack
of a whip? I fancy not, for I recall but dimly, and without acute
suffering, the horrors of my smoking days. There were nights when I
awoke with a pain at my heart that made me hold my breath. I did not
dare move. After perhaps ten minutes of dread, I would shift my position
an inch at a time. Less frequently I felt this sting in the daytime,
and believed I was dying while my friends were talking to me. I never
mentioned these experiences to a human being; indeed, though a medical
man was among my companions, I cunningly deceived him on the rare
occasions when he questioned me about the amount of tobacco I was
consuming weekly. Often in the dark I not only vowed to give up smoking,
but wondered why I cared for it. Next morning I went straight from
breakfast to my pipe, without the smallest struggle with myself.
Latterly I knew, while resolving to break myself of the habit, that
I would be better employed trying to sleep. I had elaborate ways of
cheating myself, but it became disagreeable to me to know how many
ounces of tobacco I was smoking weekly. Often I smoked cigarettes to
reduce the number of my cigars.

On the other hand, if these sharp pains be excepted, I felt quite well.
My appetite was as good as it is now, and I worked as cheerfully and
certainly harder. To some slight extent, I believe, I experienced the
same pains in my boyhood, before I smoked, and I am not an absolute
stranger to them yet. They were most frequent in my smoking days, but I
have no other reason for charging them to tobacco. Possibly a doctor who
was himself a smoker would have pooh-poohed them. Nevertheless, I have
lighted my pipe, and then, as I may say, hearkened for them. At the
first intimation that they were coming