and breath offer to kiss you good
morning?"

I said: "You don't have to kiss me," and with this I left for my work.
On the way her question seemed to be waiting my answer, and I gave it
in a resolve that she should never again have cause to repeat that
question, and with my resolve went the cigar.

About this time a co-worker joined me in the same resolution, which
helped me to keep mine. After tea that evening Mrs. Bain said: "I did
not know you were so sensitive, or I should not have said what I did."
I did not tell her then of my promise, lest I should fail to keep it.
Thirty-five years have passed and not a single cigar have I had
between my lips since that morning.

Boys, take one five-cent cigar after each meal, add up the nickels for
one year, put the money at interest, next year, and every year do the
same, compounding the interest, and in thirty-five years you will have
thirty-five hundred dollars--the price of a home for your old age.

I do not hope to convert old smokers, but if I can persuade one young
man in this audience to throw away the cigarette, never to smoke one
again, then I will have honored this hour's service.

If I could live life over I would take the same total-abstinence
pledge I took fifty years ago and have kept inviolate to this day. I
would take it, not only because of its personal benefit to me, but
because of what it has led me to do for others.

It is said reformers never expect to see the bread they cast upon the
waters; inventors may, but not reformers. Yet I have lived to see my
bread come back "buttered" in my old age.

I have lived to see thousands of men and women to whom I gave the
pledge in their youth, wearing it still as a garland about their
brows, and their children, by precept and example of parents, keep
step with the onward march of the temperance army.

I have lived to see more than one hundred counties of Kentucky, in
which I established Good Templar Lodges, when bottles were on
sideboards in the homes, and barrooms in almost every crossroad
village, now in the dry column.

I have lived to see seventeen states under prohibition, fifty millions
of people of the United States living under prohibitory laws, the
Congress of the United States giving a majority vote for submitting
national prohibition to the people, and the great empire of Russia
going dry in a day.

Sweet is the "buttered bread" that is coming to me after these many
years since I cast my bread