The Small Boy's First Smoke.
I NEVER shall forget the sight of that boy. Somehow or other he had picked up the idea that it was a manly thing to smoke. The older boys thought it was manly. They smoked in the street as they came to school, and as they went home. The small boy felt very small as he saw them doing such a manly thing and reflected that he had never learned how to do it. Somebody had told him that the first smoke would make him dreadfully sick. He asked the bigger boys about this, and they told him that it was even so. But they advised him to try it even if it did make him sick for a day or two, for they had all been sick with it, and had got well again. The idea of being sick was not a pleasant one to the small boy, but he thought he would risk it, for the prospect of soon getting well again was pleasant enough to make up for it. So the small boy got two large cigars. Exactly how and where he got them I never knew, but I think some of the older boys gave them to him. At all events he felt very proud when he got them, and marched off in a happy frame of mind because he was now going to be as big as anybody else, and quite as much of a man. This happened nearly forty years ago, which to some of my young readers may seem a long while; yet the picture of that small boy is photographed on my mind so clearly that it cannot be rubbed out. I saw him after he had enjoyed his smoke on the sly, and unbeknown to his parents. The enjoyment was all over, and it was time for the misery to come along. The misery had come in full force, and had taken possession of the whole boy. The poor fellow was crouching in the shelter of a large cellar door, looking as if he wanted to escape from the sight of every other human being. At best he was not a handsome lad. He had short and bristly red hair, a low forehead, a pug nose, and one squinting eye. His face was covered with freckles, and his mouth was not of a pleasant shape. Now that he was suffering from the effects of the tobacco, every feature showed evidence of pain, and his whole expression was one of most horrible ugliness. He sat doubled up like a jackknife in a position of great discomfort. The frightful groans he was uttering showed the strife that was going on within him. One of the big boys was standing near him, and telling him to be a man and not mind it, for it would soon be over. To the wretched sufferer this was cold comfort. The very ugly little boy continued to writhe, and groan, and twist his face into ever so many uncouth shapes. To look at him anybody would have supposed he had by this time found out all that he needed to learn about smoking, and that he would never touch tobacco again. As for me, I had now seen and learned all I wanted to on the subject. Had every friend I had in the world come to me just then, each one offering me a lot of the choicest Havana cigars, I would not have been tempted by their generosity. It was enough for me to see that suffering little rascal writhe and look ugly, and to know that he had nobody to sympathize with him, and that in addition to the sufferings I had seen, he would yet suffer the thrashing his father would give him on hearing of the transaction. I thought that if smokers had to go through all this sorry experience in order to learn to smoke, they might do so if it made them happy, but I wanted none of it. All the enjoyment to be derived by a boy from making a chimney of himself for the puffing out of ill-smelling smoke, would never pay for going through what that ugly boy was enduring. However manly it might seem to strut around with a cigar, and puff it like a man puffs, and hold it between thumb and finger as a man holds it, and spit as a man spits, that small boy looked anything but manly, and there was nothing in his appearance that looked like leading to manliness. There were a great many reasons why I never learned to use tobacco, but the experience of this awful boy was the one which made the most marked impression on me. Whenever I have been tempted to smoke, the image of that suffering little wretch has come up in my mind so vividly as to discourage me from the attempt. If my first cigar will make me look as he did, and feel as he felt, I will never, never smoke it. And somebody may ask about the boy. Did he ever smoke again, or was that first smoke enough for him? He got over his evil feelings, and learned to smoke and be "manly" like the other boys. He became a clergyman. I met him a few years ago at a railway station. He was in a crowd at the ticket-office, and was selfishly puffing his smoke in other people's faces without asking them whether they liked it or not. The picture of his first smoke came at once to me, and I seemed to see him in all his youthful ugliness. He was a slave to the power of the weed that had at first so badly nauseated him.—Selected.