UNCLE WILLIAM'S PIPE

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 3, 1887

UNCLE WILLIAM'S PIPE.

PERHAPS you knew that I was guardian to an orphaned nephew of mine, a promising young fellow, who died not long ago while a member of ——— Academy. I sent him there because I honestly thought it was the safest place in the world for a really good, conscientious, sensible boy, such as he was, who had to be fitted for college somewhere, and who would be exposed, I thought, to as few temptations there as anywhere on the round earth, so far as I knew. All went well until the thirtieth day of last May, when I was telegraphed by the principal to come at once, as my nephew was very ill. I found him a ghastly sight—a pallid and empty shell, without life enough inclosed to last a week. His doctor said that his constitution seemed to be one of those which are particularly ill-adapted to resist, at that critical age through which he was passing, the nicotine poison; and that cigarettes, of which it seems he had been smoking excessively during the winter, had killed him. It was a sad funeral, but somehow I didn't take the sadness of it home to me then, as I have since.

The next night I was sitting after tea in my library there, before the fire, smoking my pipe as usual, when my wife and Harry came in, and Harry said, "Please, father, tell me about poor cousin. What made him die?" I said—and I thought it a good time to lay an anchor to windward in Harry's case—the fact was that he had been very imprudent and unwise indeed, and had smoked too many cigarettes, which imprudence, I was afraid, had killed him.

Some conversation followed, which ended with Harry's saying, "I think, father, it is a dreadful thing to smoke cigarettes. I shall always smoke a pipe as you do." "Not much, young man, you won't; if you do, I'll thrash you." "But why not, father? Can't I do what you do? You wouldn't do a bad thing, I am sure; you are too good a papa."

My wife broke in just then, and said, "My dear, I think it is important that you should make it very clear to Harry, and do it now, why it's right for you to smoke a pipe, and wrong for him. If anything should happen to you, and I be left to have him to bring up, I want that point made clear in his mind seasonably." I said, "Ah, well, I'll try and make it clear." I did try awhile, but not with my usual success; for neither she nor he seemed fully to understand it. The fact was, I didn't understand it myself so well as I had supposed I did; while my mind wandered a good deal as I talked. I kept the noise agoing, but I was inwardly thinking: "There's something terribly awkward about this. I wonder if it pays? Do I really care enough about tobacco to risk harming Harry here?" And just then it uncomfortably came to my mind how my poor nephew had said to me, just before his death, that his teacher several times had urged him not to smoke, and he had replied that his "mother's last charge was to do as Uncle William did, and it would be all right; and Uncle William smoked."

I made up my mind then and there; and, after a moment of silence, I took my pipe from my mouth, and knocking the ashes out of it over the andiron leg, I said, "Look here, Harry, do you see the inside of that pipe?" "Yes, sir." "Is it full or empty?" "Empty, sir." "Yes; well, it never will be full any more. That was the last pipe-charge of tobacco that your father will ever smoke. He don't propose to have you stumbling over his pipe into your poor cousin's grave. And tomorrow morning we will emphasize this. We will form a procession, and we'll march to the weeping willow out there by the brook, and we'll dig a little grave there; and in it we'll bury all the pipes and cigar-holders and tobacco that can be found in this house; and we'll sing Burns's song,

'For the sake of somebody,'

And we'll set up a neat marble monument over the grave, with a Latin epitaph, so that you, my boy, shall remember it, at least until you grow big and learned enough to tell what the legend means."

And we did.—Congregationalist.