p. 231 | The Indian's Curse

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 10, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 15.

The Indian's Curse.

"It deadens the sensibilities and dulls the conscience," said my father, as I came into the room where some of the boys were.

"What, father?"

"Smoke, my son."

"I don't know as to that; it smokes in my room, and I opened the windows as I came away, with smarting eyes and awakened sensibilities. I don't know about the conscience; that ought to belong to the man that built the chimney."

"Note the difference, my son, between 'it smokes' and 'he smokes.' It is of the last I was speaking."

I knew my father was aroused on a subject on which he felt much, and, the point once started, he went on a little further. He had become fully convinced, from study and from professional observation, that the use of tobacco was working infinite mischief; that, though it did not kill at sight, it was always insidiously undermining; that the constant and habitual use of a nervous stimulant, to a young boy especially, was a poison, hindering his growth and development. Books on the subject abound, if men would only read and believe. They do neither. He had seen the appetite, in many cases, lead to other and stronger vices,—the insatiable thirst to a craving for something stronger than water.

"It is not mere accident, boys," he said, "that smoking and drinking go so naturally together."

He had seen so much of the strength of the habit, and of its mischiefs, that he began with us early. He knew the temptation, how manly a cigar looked, how calm and soothing and pleasant the indulgence; but he told us the other side. Then he never forbade our smoking; he knew too well the danger of the temptation to secret disobedience; but he took a favorable moment, and gained a promise from time to time, from one or another, that he would not touch tobacco for so long,—a month, three months, a year. Thus the temptation for the time was avoided, for a pledge helps one wonderfully; and so the strong temptation and the habit never came, till by and by we were beyond the reach of the mischief.

We used to call tobacco "the Indian's curse," from the old story, perhaps mythical, certainly prophetic. "I go," said the Indian, "and leave to the white man the graves and the hunting-grounds of my fathers." But he pointed to the broad lands growing luxuriantly at his feet, and added, "These two curses shall cling to him and destroy his race; the fever that shall burn him to the bone, and the tobacco that shall beguile away his life."

My father thought the habit was demoralizing; and it was a case in point which had come up just before I entered the room, which led to his remarks upon the properties and effects of smoke.

The case was this: Two young men had gone by invitation to visit a gentleman at his country-house. They had been received with all hospitality and kindness, and at evening, perhaps observing tokens of restlessness on the part of his friends, he had remarked, in the course of some conversation as to the beauties and advantages of the place. "There is one peculiarity: we do not allow any smoking on the premises. Mrs. Blank and I both dislike tobacco, and are opposed to it from principle, and we make this an invariable rule." One of the young men told the story himself, afterward, which made it worse. Said he, "We wanted to smoke; so, after we had gone to our room, Mr. X. said, 'Let's have a smoke in spite of them.' So we closed the doors and windows, and had a good smoke; then we opened the windows very quietly, and aired the room well; but what should we do with the ends of our cigars? We dared not leave them in the room, so we concluded to throw them as far off as we could into the shrubbery. The end was, that in the darkness we did not see that they fell precisely into a graveled path, where Mrs. Blank saw them the next morning as she was walking toward the garden."

Mr. Blank made some slight allusion to it the next morning, saying, "Mrs. B. thought she perceived smoke the night before, but was not sure." He was too polite to say more to his guests, for they called themselves Christian men and gentlemen. Alas that the two terms should ever be other than synonymous!

We did not follow out the story, though our fancy was that the young men would wait long before they would receive another invitation to visit the same house. And it was apropos to this glaring violation of the rules of courtesy and hospitality, that my father made his first remark as to the effect of smoke on the heart and conscience.

You think "it is a small matter to make a fuss about," do you, my friend? That is just what I said. Your moral sense is besmoked, your fine, keen sense of right, as well as of Christian courtesy.

Times have changed. Time was when he who invited another to his house conferred a favor on him; now, the visitor, forsooth, confers a favor on his entertainer if he will only go to him, and his host is bound to conform to his wishes and indulge his fancies, even to his own inconvenience. In other words, your friend's house is your inn! I trow not. These are not the laws of hospitality nor of good breeding.

It is said of the freed slaves at the South, it is said of women in heathen countries, that they are so depressed and bowed down, so utterly sunken and degraded, they do not know that they can rise; you cannot raise them; all ambition, all hope, is crushed out of them; nor do they know ever, what they have lost. Even a perception of those blessings is denied them.

This is very much the effect of all slavery, and quite as much as any of the pernicious habit of smoking.—Sel.