if the 'immaterial essence' could be infected
by any earthly virus, would subject the departed soul to quarantine
before it could enter the gates of heaven?"[73]

[73] A female teacher in the Bay State, in 1847, addressed the following
inquiry through the columns of the Massachusetts Common School Journal:

"I have been laboring for the last year in a large school, and have
endeavored, according to the best of my ability, to inculcate habits of
neatness among the pupils, especially to break them of the filthy habit
of spitting upon the floor. I have often told them _gentlemen_ never do
it. But at a recent visit of the committee, an individual, who has been
elected by the town to superintend the educational interests of the
rising generation, _spit_ the dirty juice of his _tobacco_ quid upon the
floor of my school-room with apparent self-complacency.

"Shall I say to the children that this person is _not_ a _gentleman_,
and thus destroy his influence? or shall I pass it over in silence, and
thus leave them to draw the natural inference that all I have said on
the subject is only a woman's whim?"

Mr. Mann, the editor, gave a full reply through the Journal, from which
I have here quoted part of a paragraph. He closes by offering a prize of
the "eternal gratitude of all decent men" to the discoverer of a remedy
or antidote for the evil.

"Touch not, taste not, handle not," is the only safe rule in relation to
all vicious practices; and especially is it true of this habit, which we
can not call _beastly_, for there is not a _natural_ beast in creation
that indulges in it. I therefore congratulate my countrymen in view of
the prospect before us of ultimately being freed from this disgusting
and filthy habit, for the Board of Education in some of our cities have
already wisely adopted the rule of employing no teachers who use tobacco
in any form. Let this rule become universal among us, and the next
generation will be comparatively free from the use of that repulsive
weed, which only one of all created beings takes to naturally. Wherever
else the filthy practice may be allowed, it ought never to be permitted
in a house consecrated to the sacred work of educating the rising
generation. And just look at the immense expenditure in this country
for the support of this pernicious habit. It is said, on good authority,
that for _smoking_ merely we pay annually a tax of ten millions of
dol