Smoking Again | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 26, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 13.

Smoking Again.

It is simply astonishing that people who seem to be gentlemanly in every other respect will consent to turn themselves into a nuisance by means of smoking. True, they sometimes ask, Is smoking offensive? But a man who is a gentleman and not a bore, might about as well expect to get a frank answer to the question, Is my presence disagreeable? Is it not a marvel that on the street a man who would scorn to do an ungentlemanly thing will yet puff away, sending a sickening smoke necessarily into the faces of others, or that he will take a seat at your side when saturated with smoke? Here is the experience of one of our readers:—

A gentleman was expected at my house and was to be with us overnight. He is intelligent, cultured, very interesting in conversation, and a prominent writer for the press. I went to the station to meet him, and as I watched the car platform for his appearance, I was astonished to see him come upon the opposite platform from the smoking-car, with a crowd of men of emphatically the baser sort. I am sure that no other thing but bondage to tobacco would lead that man to choose such companions in traveling. We passed the evening most enjoyably. It was quite late when he went to his room. He had been there but a few moments when an extremely pungent and offensive odor began to fill the house. It was not a good cigar. That would have been comparatively enjoyable. It was more pungent and nauseating than any I ever smelled about a railroad gravel train.

We had to open doors and windows on a cold winter's night to air the house, before we could go to our rooms without nausea, and it was several days before the odor left the house. —Congregationalist.