p. 14 | The Devil's Kindling-Wood

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 11, 1912

The Devil's Kindling-Wood

THIS is what Rev. C. M. Southgate, of Worcester, calls cigarettes, and the term is none too strong. In one of his admirable sermons, entitled “A Plain Talk With the Boys,” he says in regard to smoking:—

Do you want to know where a boy usually begins to be fast?—With a cigarette. It is the lad’s first step in bravado, and in resistance of sober morality; it is a bold step in disobedience. Just now take the matter on the scientific side.

Tobacco blights a boy’s finest powers, wit, muscle, conscience, will. Nations are legislating against it. Germany, with all her smoke, says, “No tobacco in the schools.” It spoils the brains of the youth, and makes them too small in stature for soldiers. Knock at the door of the great military institutions of France, —“No tobacco” is the response. Try West Point and Annapolis,—“Drop that cigarette” is the word. Indeed, smoking boys are not likely to get as far as that. Major Houston, of the marine corps, who is in charge of the Washington navy-yard barracks, says that one fifth of all the boys examined are rejected on account of heart-disease, of which ninety-nine cases in one hundred come from cigarettes. His first question is, “Do you smoke?” “No, sir,” is the invariable reply. But the record is stamped on the very body of the lad, and out he goes. Apply for a position in a bank. If you use tobacco, beer, cards, the bank has no use for you.

Business life demands fine brain, steady nerve, firm conscience. Watch the boys. See one sixteen years in age, twelve in size, twenty in sin, and he smokes, probably chews and drinks. Babes of seven or eight are at it. The vice increases. I could pile up statistics by the hour, testimony from the highest medical authority, of the misery preparing and already come. The use of cigarettes not only increases enormously, but it also increases the use of stronger tobacco. In August, 1889, sixteen million more cigars were made in this country than in the year before, and the firm that made this statement credits the increase to the cigarette, and the fault to careless parents.

Tobacco is murdering many a lad. Where they do not fairly kill, cigarettes are the devil’s kindling-wood. They start a craving for stimulants that liquor is the quickest to meet. And why is it that “fancy” pictures go with them as prizes, unless licentiousness comes next? By the time tobacco has killed a few more generals like Grant, and a few more emperors like Frederick the Noble, and a few more business men and bright boys, a smart boy may get it through his head that it doesn’t pay. And not till the smart boys quit, will the poor and the dull let it alone. The highest style of man does not smoke, will not submit to its slavery, nor be responsible for the example.— Congregationalist.