realize that the habit in question is an evil and to have the will to be free. Fortunately there still are some men who hate the vice of smoking as much as we do, and we can appeal to them, should we be accused of egotism. Besides, men know better how to steep their tobacco-steeped fellows in shame. Permit me to read you an article from "Der Pionier," in which an enemy of smoking attacks an habitual smoker who claims to have discovered that smoking is an intellectual entertainment, a sort of substitute for thinking.
"Whoever is so thoughtless," we read, "that smoking can take the place of thinking for him, simplv sleeps with open eyes, and ought to be able to sleep just as well without, as with a stump in his mouth. Is the Turk a thinker? He will laugh at you if you suspect him to be one, and yet he is the hardest and most enduring smoker in the world. Whoever imitates him in this respect must not be surprised if he is put on an intellectual level with the Turk. If you read a paper at home, or chat with your family, or play a game of chess or whist, are you not as well entertained as when you hold an odious stick between your lips and blow odious fumes into the air that irritate your eyes? I have never yet found a man who could explain wherein the enjoyment of smoking really consisted; but neither have I ever found a smoker who 'was not a downright slave to this undefinable enjoyment. The entire enjoyment consists in a thoughtless illusion
