the immediate palpable results show it to be poisonous. A very few puffs create a giddiness of the head and a tremor of the nerves which declare the presence of an enemy. Let the daring experimenter continue to puff, and the symptoms of physical distress grow more decided until the seeker of knowledge under difficulties is sick, as he thinks, unto death. The muscles are relaxed and powerless, the face is livid, the breathing is labored, cold drops of sweat stand upon the forehead, and the victim of experimental philosophy pants in an agony of nausea and loathing indescribable. After the lapse of an hour or two the effect ceases, and the new smoker revives, perhaps to laugh at, as a good joke, the sickness which God designed to be a warning. Take now the same person, ten years afterward, a confirmed devotee of tobacco, consuming five, ten, or fifteen cigars a day. Suppose him to return home at night, after a very busy day, during the last five or six hours of which he has not tasted food, drink, or tobacco. He is weary and hungry, perhaps nervous and irritable, but the appetite which he feels most sensibly is the appetite for tobacco. He eats his supper in haste first that he may smoke at his leisure afterward. The meal being over he seizes his pipe or cigar, and the first three puffs give him more apparent pleasure than the needful wholesome food which preceded it. His satisfaction grows as he continues to smoke. His nerves sink into a delicious quiet, his fatigue is remembered no more, the cares and perplexities of the day fade into the distance, and his whole being, body and soul, yields to pleasant repose. The whole man, in fact, is under an influence which is only one of the milder forms of intoxication. Such are the effects of smoking, as

nearly as we can ascertain them. We confess that we have found it difficult to learn what are the elements of the pleasure experienced by the habitual user of tobacco. The initiated seem not to be able to analyze their own sensations, or else there is a very general unwillingness to reveal them to an outside inquirer. It will be safest for us, therefore, to keep in view the undisputed effects of tobacco when employed as a medicine.

To return, then, to our medical authorities, tobacco is a "nervous sedative," whose effect is "at the same time to reduce the nervous power and lessen the force of the circulation." We infer, therefore, that the "delicious repose" which constitutes the chief charm of tobacco, arises from the fact that the whole system feels its influence, and that the nerves are less sensitive and the beating of the heart is less frequent and strong. The tobacco user, like the consumer of alcohol and opium, feels the power of his drug in his whole being. Will he doubt this assertion? When he seizes the cigar

or the quid so eagerly, after a few hours' abstinence, what is the nature of the gratification which he seeks? Does he do it as he eats a peach, or chews a piece of cinnamon, because the taste is agreeable? Not so. His nervous system has become accustomed to the effect of his drug, just as the opium eater and the consumer of alcohol have become habituated to theirs; and he craves his unnatural gratifications on physiological grounds but little removed from theirs. They need to be stimulated, he narcotized. In the cases of all three their drugs have perverted their nervous systems, and created artificial wants, a need of those drugs, and without them they are all three unnerved, spiritless, and miserable. Deprive the inveterate consumer of alcohol, the opium eater, and the user of tobacco in any one of its forms, of their poison, and they are alike weak in body and wretched in mind, and their nerves are so shattered by a few days' abstinence that they are on the verge of insanity. We have known one case in which tobacco produced effects bordering on the delirium tremens. These facts speak a language which ought not to be misunderstood. They show that it is not the mere taste of tobacco, but its narcotic effect upon the whole system, which gives it its wonderful power to charm and enslave. We have been told, in all apparent sincerity, and somtimes with tears, by the victims of this drug, that they could not give up the practice. The unnatural appetite is so despotic, the agonies of reforming so terrible, that their reason, their self-regard, and even their conscience, were unable to stem the torrent. No; it is not the mere sensations produced in the nerves of taste which make the craving for tobacco so remorseless. It is the power which it possesses of so subjecting the system to its sway that without it life seems impossible.

Some may fancy that this description of the difficulties of reform is overdone, and that even the farthest gone may easily retrace his steps. Though all the reformed may not suffer the same horrors, the picture has not a single shade too deep. The idea of an easy return is one of the delusions which throw their flattering light along every evil path. We cannot know the power of a habit till we resist it. The dog fastened to the axle of his master's wagon never knows the strength of the chain that binds him till he pulls back. A gentleman of worth and intelligence, an unwilling victim, who has tried more than once to be free, but is still a slave of the drug, has assured us that he would gladly give money, and give liberally, to be rid of the habit, but that the remembrance of the failures already made deprives him of the courage to attempt again. Some reform for a time, and after weeks or months of abstinence

the undying appetite for the old indulgence overthrows their strong resolutions and they fall. Who would bow his neck to a yoke of iron? Who would so bind himself, soul and body, to a poisonous drug that without it life becomes weariness and religion itself yields no joy? If any, the drug is before him, and numberless respectable examples on every side.

Assuming, as we surely may from the foregoing, that tobacco subjugates the whole physical system, reducing it to the most abject dependence upon its enslaver, the question still remains, What is the immediate visible result of each indulgence? Again we return to our medical authorities. Digitalis, tobacco, and prussic acid are "nervous sedatives," whose property it is to "reduce the nervous power and the force of the circulation."

But, as we have seen, muscular force, as well as mental and emotional power, depends upon the circulation, and that when the heart beats feebly and slow, neither mind nor body is capable of great efforts. The immediate effect of a segar, then, is to lessen the inclination and the capacity for vigorous action. As the smoker inhales the volatile oils from the burning tobacco, and falls gradually under their influence, he gives indisputable evidence that his whole system is relaxed. He inclines to a lounging position, to stretch out his body horizontally, and lift up his feet, so that every muscle may be relieved from tension, and the whole frame yield readily to the narcotic repose. For the same reason the emotional susceptibility is lessened. Care, sorrow, and wrong have less power to irritate and distress, because, by the action of the drug upon the nerves, and through them upon the mind, the feelings are rendered unnaturally obtuse. In the same degree in which muscular and emotional power declines there is a loss of mental power. Where the habit is inveterate and excessive, and the susceptibility of the narcotic influence great, and the cigar or the pipe is smoked vigorously, there will result an almost total suspension of thought. Thus as the drug "reduces the nervous power and the force of the circulation," the brakes are applied to body and soul, and energy of every kind declines with the falling pulse. There are, doubtless, cases in which this result is less marked than in others; but the exceptions in regard to tobacco are no more numerous than in the case of other drugs, whose physiological effects are equally peculiar and definite. Some consumers of tobacco speak of the excitement which they think that it produces in their systems; but if the drug be a "nervous sedative," no such primary result can follow. Their impressions upon the subject can be accounted for in either of two ways. Their tobacco may be adulter

ated, as it sometimes is, with some stimulating drug, to which the exciting effect is due. The probability is, however, that they apply the term "excitement" to the mere pleasurable sensations which they experience, and which in reality originate in the decline of cerebral and arterial activity.

Having thus briefly set forth the chemical nature, and, so far as we can ascertain them, the peculiar effects which constitute the charm of tobacco, we would, with the modesty which becomes those who stand in the minority, propose a question or two for the consideration of those who are yet uninitiated into the arcana of the drug.

OWS.

First of all, we would ask, is it right thus to tamper with the mysteries of our nature? The object really aimed at is a pleasurable state of mind to be attained by laying the nervous system under the spell of a poisonous drug. The enjoyment can hardly be called sensual. The victim of alcohol swallows his dose, and in a few moments the sensuous pleasure is gone. But after the nerves of taste have ceased to recognize the flavor of the liquor, the higher nature feels the power of the drug, and mental and emotional action is greatly modified. There is an exhilaration, an elevation of the spirits, which lifts the soul out of its abysses of sorrow and care, and lends it wings for a flight above the level of earthly shadThese wings are indeed but the waxen device of Dedalus, and, melting in the sun, they plunge the soul into seas of darkness and floods of woe. Still while they last they bear on bravely. Hasheesh and opium act in the same way, still more powerfully. The votary of tobacco, who comforts himself with a cigar or a pipe, employs means of much the same nature, philosophically considered. They all seek a pleasant frame of mind, not in communing with God, not in the vigorous normal action of the intellect, not even in lawfully meeting natural wants, but by subjecting the nervous system to the action of drugs. Is it right thus to disturb the regular workings of the mental and emotional nature? Is it right to interpose a prism between reason and fact, even though the vision be beautiful? Has the Creator, in adjusting our nature to our outward circumstances, and one part of our nature to another, so erred that we may lawfully hurry on this, or retard that wheel of his clumsy machinery? Is it right, now to intensify our emotions, now to deaden them by artificial means? And seeing that the effects desired never follow, except when drugs which are unquestionably intoxicating are employed, are not the influences experienced, whether much or little, whether exciting or soothing, really and truly intoxication?

Is all this morally allowable? The bodily states affect the men

tal and moral condition. A nerve, the fourth of an inch long, and no thicker than a hair, becomes diseased, and the result may be that a man, otherwise hopeful and energetic, becomes timid and dispirited. Lay the nervous system under the power of a certain drug, and the mind is driven to preternatural activity, the fancy glowing with an inspiration before unknown, and the soul reveling in an ocean of visionary joy. Substitute another drug for this, and the animal nature is chiefly affected, and every appetite and passion possessed in common with the brute is clothed with new power and new excitability. Employ another drug still, and body and soul sink into a strange repose, the body becoming listless and inert, and the mind floating off in vague and meaningless reverie. Is all this right, if practised as a species of self-indulgence? Why shall no drunkard enter into the kingdom of God? Is it because, in walking, a right line is morally better than a zigzag course? Or is it because the drunkard, by means of his drugs, wilfully disturbs the relation of body and soul, and gives up the immortal to the mastery of the material? This seems to us the worst element of the vice, and the parent of the rest. It is the abuse of the nobler nature. It makes the servant a master, and the master a slave. It wrests the reins from Hector's hands, and drags him in the dust behind his own chariot. And wherein does drugging with alcohol differ from drugging with tobacco? We admit that the tobacco intoxication is milder and less dangerous to the individual and to others; still, is it not intoxication? The action of the mind is disturbed in the one case as in the other, and in both the thing aimed at in the indulgence is to create, by means of drugs, a pleasurable state of the mind. The substances employed in both cases are poisons, and, quantity for quantity, tobacco is far more deadly than alcohol. Is it right, then, in the case of tobacco, any more than in the case of alcohol, to seek, in the region and shadow of death, outside of natural wants and natural supplies, for something to create artificial repose of body and fictitious exemption from anxiety and trouble?

Again: This repose is the result of a reduction of mental and physical activity. Is it right for us thus to throw away, deliberately, a part of our energy and efficiency? If tobacco "reduces the nervous power and the force of the circulation," it also reduces the general vigor, lessens the number of the ideas, the depth of the emotions, and the inclination to bodily motion, and makes a man practically smaller in every respect. To prove that the use of tobacco wastes the natural forces, we appeal to its votaries themselves. Do we not often hear men say that they use it to prevent