answered. "But they
always get over it; and each time they smoke, they get more used to it,
or something, and after a while they don't get sick at all. Look at me.
It never makes me sick, but it did at first. Surely you can stand a
little sickness when you know that it is going to make a man of you!"

John concluded that under those circumstances he could endure his
suffering. But he did not try to smoke any more that morning. With
Will's assistance he found the doorway of the cellar and went out where
the air was more pure. Gradually, he began to feel better. When dinner
time came, however, he did not care to eat; but he kept repeating to
himself, "It won't be this way long, and I can afford to suffer if it
will make a man of me." How sad to think that one so young should be
so deceived!

Could someone have taught him then that the sick feeling that had so
distressed him was caused by the strong poison contained in the tobacco,
it might have encouraged him never to touch it again. Had his father
explained that every pound of tobacco contains three hundred and twenty
grains of this poison, one grain of which will kill a large dog in about
three minutes; or told him the story of how a man once ran a needle and
thread that had been dipped in the poison through the skin of a frog and
of how the frog in a few moments began to act like a drunken person,
vomited, and hopped about as fast as possible, and then laid down,
twitched for a moment in agony, and died; or informed him that many
people become insane just through the use of tobacco, John might have
yet been influenced to leave the poisonous stuff alone--but perhaps his
father did not know. Anyway, John was left without this much-needed
information.

Boys who are not properly warned of the danger of tobacco-using are to
be pitied more than blamed if they indulge; but their ignorance does not
lessen the harm and the evils wrought. When the poison gets into the
system, it affects the most vital organs; it undermines that strength
and destroys that beauty which ornament true manhood and which assure an
individual of success. Besides, the continued using causes the indulger
to form a habit that cannot be easily overcome.

John, being not fully warned of the dreadful consequences of using
tobacco, and yet determined to become a man, kept on smoking until he
so accustomed his system to the shock that he felt satisfied he was
becoming a conqueror and would soon be able to