A Bank President’s Testimony
“No, thank you, I don’t smoke,” replied the bank president as his host at luncheon tendered him a cigar. “Yes, I used to,” he continued, answering the inevitable question, “but I quit it because I wouldn’t be annoyed by the craving for tobacco at times when it wasn’t proper for me to smoke. “I made a rule in the bank, you see, that none of the clerks should smoke during business hours. And of course I had to keep the rule myself. And I would all the while be wanting a cigar so bad, and be so anxious for business hours to be over so I could get at my cigar, that I was miserably uncomfortable all the time. I could hardly hold my mind down to my work. “So one day I got completely disgusted at the everlasting annoyance of it and I said to myself, ‘Here’s where this nuisance quits,’ and I haven’t smoked since. I stopped with half a box full of cigars in my desk, and they are there yet. “No, it wasn’t as much of a hardship as I expected. When once I made up my mind that there wasn’t any more smoking for me, the wish for it didn’t last long. In just a few days I was working along without any bother whatever.” — The Interior.