he may
find himself yielding to the old temptation which he had supposed to be
conquered forever.

An old soldier was walking home with a beefsteak in one hand and a
basket of eggs in the other, when some one yelled, "Halt! Attention!"
Instantly the veteran came to a stand; and, as his arms took the
position of "attention," eggs and meat went tumbling into the street,
the accustomed nerves responding involuntarily to the old stimulus.

Paul evidently understood the force of habit. "I find, then," he
declares, "the law, that to me who would do good, evil is present. For
I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see a different
law in my members, warring against the law in my mind, and bringing me
into captivity, under the law of sin, which is in my members. O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this
death!" He referred to the ancient custom of binding a murderer face
to face with the dead body of his victim, until suffocated by its
stench and dissolution.

"I would give a world, if I had it," said an unfortunate wretch, "to be
a true man; yet in twenty-four hours I may be overcome and disgraced
with a shilling's worth of sin."

"How shall I a habit break?"
As you did that habit make.
As you gathered, you must lose;
As you yielded, now refuse.
Thread by thread the strands we twist,
Till they bind us, neck and wrist;
Thread by thread the patient hand
Must untwine, ere free we stand;
As we builded, stone by stone,
We must toil unhelped, alone,
Till the wall is overthrown.

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE CIGARETTE

We are so accustomed to the sight and smell of tobacco that we entirely
overlook the fact that the tobacco of commerce in all its forms is the
product of a poisonous weed. It is first a narcotic and then an
irritant poison. It has its place in all toxicological classifications
together with its proper antidotes.

Tobacco has not achieved its almost universal popularity without strong
opposition. In England King James launched his famous "Counterblaste"
against its use. In Turkey, where men and women are alike slaves to
its fascination, tobacco was originally forbidden under severe
penalties; the loss of the ears, the slitting of the nostrils and even
death itself being penalties imposed for the infraction of the law
forbidding the use of tobacco in any form. Since then pipes, cigars,
snuff and chewing tobacco have become populari