MY LAST CIGAR by Christian at Work

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 50.

MY LAST CIGAR.

By Christian at Work

ONE Christmas my mother invited her children to her home to spend the day. I went and enjoyed the last Christmas I ever spent with her. After enjoying a real good, old-fashioned Christmas dinner, I went out doors to smoke an extra large and fine Havana, which a friend had given me a few days before for a "Christmas-day smoke." I found the flavor fine, but the tobacco was much stronger than I was accustomed to, so that when only a third of it was smoked I found myself quite dizzy, and compelled to cease operations, though I had used the weed ten years.

So I let the fire go out, and after the dizziness had passed off I went back into my mother's presence, with the unlit cigar between my teeth. As I entered mother looked up and said:—

"My son, I wish you would do something to-day that you will in the future always be glad you did upon this Christmas-day, which will be of permanent good to you through your remaining life, and make your mother happy as well."

"Name it, mother," I replied.

"Throw that cigar into the stove and never smoke another, or use the vile weed in any way; it is a slow but sure poison, besides being an expensive habit."

I took out the cigar from my mouth, looked at it, asked myself, Can I leave off smoking?—then I looked over to mother's chair; her eyes were closed, but her lips moved, and I felt that mother was lifting up her heart to God for me, and the words came to me, "My grace is sufficient," and instantly I raised the stove lid and threw in my Havana, and said—

"Mother, I will do it."

"You will never regret it," she said, and tears of joy rolled down her cheeks. And I am happy to say I have never regretted it. The great wonder to me to-day is how I ever could consent to have endured the slavery of tobacco ten years. Having been a free man fifteen years I have come to despise tobacco in every form in which men use it. And how a father can use the vile weed, and encourage his children to use it, as thousands do in our State, is one of the most astonishing things to me, and one of the saddest things I encounter. And I hope Christian women will wage their war upon tobacco as well as upon rum until it is banished from every home. Mothers, do your duty! Fathers, do it by example as well as by precept, and then the evil will be stamped out, because there is no influence so powerful with a son as a father's and mother's.—Christian at Work.