n, thus raising the price of food, and consequently
making men go hungry. In addition I see men, women, and sometimes
children, in rags and hungry even, with pipes and tobacco, and when
they complain of heaven not supplying them with enough food to eat,
it would be less than honest not to point out to them that the
fault lies not with heaven, but with themselves, and that part at
least of the scarcity of grain they experience is due to the
cultivation and use of tobacco, which throughout that whole region
is very excessive.

'I have dwelt thus at length on the tobacco question, not because
it is the most important of the three things here spoken of, but
because many good brethren have not been able to see with me on
this point. They feel, as I used to do before I went to that
region, that tobacco smoking is a small affair, not worth raising
into prominence or the region of conscience or Christian duty at
all. These brethren have not _seen_ how things work. I feel sure
that almost any missionary placed as I was would have done exactly
what I have done, taken a stand against this excessive growth and
more excessive use of tobacco, for, not content with what they
grow, they actually import quantities of it. Tobacco is not the
greatest cause of poverty and hunger in the district, but it is a
much greater factor in poverty than would at first be supposed. But
for its use in that district a large number of men, women, and
children, who are deficiently clothed and fed, would be warm and
sleek. Christ taught men to pray, "Give us this day our daily
bread." It must be wrong to make hundreds of men, women, and
children go half clad and half fed, simply that eighty or ninety
per cent. of the adults of that district may indulge in tobacco, a
thing, according to their own admission, utterly without use, and
for the continuance of which they can give no reason, further than
that they have acquired the habit and find it difficult to give it
up.

'A more serious question, however, is the whisky. In going into
that region I was amazed at the quantity of whisky used. I used to
lodge in an inn and take my meals in an eating-house. There, twice
a day, I had an opportunity of studying the drinking habits of the
country. Almost every man who entered the eating-hou