Temperance in the Home by Augusta C Bainbridge

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 4, 1908

Temperance in the Home

By Augusta C Bainbridge

AUGUSTA C BAINBRIDGE

“HANNAH, Mr. Prince gave me these seeds to-night: what do you suppose they are?” said Mr. Neal, opening a carefully wrapped little envelope.

“I am sure I have no idea,” said his wife. “What did he say about them? and why did he give them to you?”

“He said they came to him in his last shipment of choice seeds,—but they were not labeled. He is going to try a few, and he gave me these.”

“You do not know whether they need sun or shade, or moist or dry soil,—what will you do?”

“I will put a few over in that warm corner by the lettuce bed, and give Nathan a few to try.”

The seeds were planted in various places, and the family watched them with interest.

One day Pearl came in from the garden with a pan of crisp, fresh lettuce.

“Mother, I wish you would smell of this lettuce. It seems to me it has a strange odor. I notice it every time I go down to that part of the garden. I wonder what it is.”

“This lettuce seems perfectly fresh and sweet, my dear. What is there down there?”

“Nothing unusual, except that those new plants are growing very fast, and beginning to bloom.”

“We will ask Nathan, when he comes in, to investigate for us.”

But Baby John had heard enough to make him want to “‘vestigate” for himself, and he trotted off to the garden, unnoticed by Mrs. Neal or Pearl, who were busy preparing dinner. Very soon he returned with his arms full of the “pitty fowers” and green leaves, and proceeded to amuse himself by picking them to pieces on the back porch.

“It seems to me that I smell that odor every where I go,” said Pearl, going out the back door to meet her father and Nathan; for she felt sure they could help her out of her trouble.

The trio came upon John and the odor at the same moment.

“O, Johnny Boy! what have you done to the pretty plants?” said Nathan.

“I ’vestigate,” said John, wisely.

“Well, I think I have found the smell I have been bothered about. Ugh! how nasty,” said Pearl. “You will need a good washing and some clean clothes, my little “‘vestigator,” before you are fit to sit at table with the rest of us,” she added, and carried “Johnny Boy” off to the bath-room.

Mr. Neal picked up a few of the viscid lanceolate leaves, and a cluster of the pink, funnel-shaped flowers, saying, “This belongs to the nightshade family. It must be a medicinal plant; but, like Pearl, I find the odor very disagreeable. I’ll take these down to Mr. Bond, the druggist, and see if he can tell me what they are.” He wrapped them in paper, while Nathan swept up the broken leaves, and carried them to the far-off trash pile.

“Why, Mr. Neal, this is tobacco,” said Mr. Bond. “Since you do not use the weed, little wonder that you did not recognize it; though the aroma and flavor are not fully brought out until the leaves are dried, cured, and packed for fermentation. A constituent called nicotin gives an odor, and an essential oil, or resinous matter, gives the flavor. This is the smoking tobacco used in the United States for cigars and pipe-smoking. The export tobacco is a gummy product, having a creosotic flavor, much liked abroad, but distasteful to most Americans.”

“I thank you, Mr. Bond, I will study this a little farther,” said Mr. Neal at parting; “but when I tell the name of it at home I doubt if a leaf remains to see another noon. We all dislike it so.”

“Yes, Nathan, Mr. Bond knew it, and I wonder if you can guess what it is.”

“I looked up ‘night shade,’ while you were gone, and read about belladonna, and medicine, and narcotic poison,” said Nathan.

“We find it in the botany, as well as the encyclopedia and dictionary,” said Mr. Neal, as they came into the house together. “Suppose you look up ‘tobacco.’”

“Just to think of clean folks, like ourselves, raising a plant that the savages of America used and gave to the colonists,” said Pearl.

“Yes, and they raised it and sold it,” said Nathan.

“Even buying their wives with it,” added Mrs. Neal.

All were soon busy with reference books.

“Good to kill vermin and smoke insects from plants,” read Nathan.

“Produces a deathly sickness where first used,” added Mr. Neal.

“Animals never touch it, if left to their own instincts, and I’ve read somewhere that cannibals will not eat a tobacco-user,” said Pearl.

“Is that an argument in its favor, sister?” questioned Nathan, laughingly.

“Well, hardly,” she replied, “yet it reveals nature.”

“Causes an unnatural thirst and depression of spirits, which often leads men to the use of liquor,” read Mrs. Neal.

“We may call it the ‘ally of the saloon,’” added Mr. Neal.

“We generally see them in each other’s company; for, ‘Birds of a feather flock together,’” replied Mrs. Neal.

San Francisco, Cal.