HOW A MOTHER CURED A SON.
A MOTHER, of high spirit, who utterly loathed this popular filth, had sometimes seen one of her “darlings” aping dandyism. She had seen him take his various degrees, as he first smoked paper, then grape-vine, then rattan, and then she caught him with the genuine article between his ruby lips. As he caught the mother’s eye, the cigar fell. “Ah!” she exclaimed, “I will kill or cure.” “Smoke away, my son,” she cried aloud. He smoked, and ceased. “Smoke away, my son,” she cried in a sterner voice. He did so, and reeled and cascaded with beautiful freedom! “Smoke away,” she cried again. At this point the urchin called for quarter, telling his mother, if she let him stop, he would “smoke no more till he was twenty-one.” But then, in a tone which would have done honor to a queen, she cried, “Smoke away, my son.” This was the finishing stroke with this miniature dandy. “Mother, let me stop! Oh! let me stop!” he cried, “and I will smoke no more till the day of my death.” She did, of course. Her treatment was effective. The son is now an admirable man, who regards “the weed,” with utter scorn and loathing.—Golden Censer.