ntemptibly
selfish indifference to her comfort all those years, have humbled me,
I tell you. And I wouldn't exchange my own daily satisfaction
now-a-days in being a _cleaner_ man--inside and outside--for the
delight that anybody gets out of his cigars.

"I didn't need to go outside of my own doors to find reasons enough
for giving up the habit; but I think I found still stronger ones,
after all, when I went away from home. The more I thought about the
harm tobacco does in the community at large, the more sure I felt that
it was time for me to stop giving it the moral support of my example.
I know I smoked too much, and that my nervous system is the worse for
it; and I think the people who are likely to be hurt the most by it
are just the ones who are most likely to smoke excessively. And then,
I've noticed that the medical men who stand up for tobacco, are always
men who use it, and are liable to the suspicion of straining a point
in justification of their own self-indulgence.

"On one point, though, I believe the authorities agree. No one denies
that it is a damaging indulgence for boys. It means a good deal when
smoking is forbidden to the pupils in the polytechnic schools in
Paris, and the military schools in Germany, purely on hygienic
grounds. The governments of these smoking nations are not likely to be
notional on that matter. But the use of tobacco by our American boys
and men is excessive and alarming. We ought to save our rising
generation for better work than they can do if tobacco saps the
strength of their growing years, and makes the descent easier, as no
doubt it often does, to worse vices. I don't know how to forgive
myself for the temptation I set before my Sabbath-school class of
bright boys, year after year, by my smoking habits.

"It isn't in the family, either, that the selfishness of the habit is
most apparent. I don't believe, other things being equal, there is any
other class of men who show such a disregard in public for other
people's comfort as tobacco users do. A man would be considered a
rowdy or a boor who should wilfully spatter mud on the clothing of a
lady as she passed him on the sidewalk. But a lady to whom tobacco
fumes are more offensive than mud, can hardly walk the streets in
these days, but that men who call themselves gentlemen--and who _are_
gentlemen in most other respects--blow their cigar smoke into her
face at almost every step. Smokers drive non-smokers out of the
gentl