What a horrible thing it is that by no physical effort, added to years of mental self-control, can I so harden my nerves that certain words, names, suggestions, shall not startle me—make me quiver as if under the knife. Doubtless, Treherne will henceforth retain—so far as his easy mind can retain anything—the idea that I have a wife and family hidden somewhere! Ludicrous idea, if it were not connected with other ideas from which, however, this one will serve to turn his mind.
To explain it away was of course impossible. I had only power to slip from the subject with a laugh, and bring him back to the tobacco question.
“Yes; I smoked six cigars a-day for at least two years.”
“And gave it up? Wonderful!”
“Not very, when a man has a will of his own, and a few strong reasons to back it.”
“Out with them—not that they will benefit me however—I'm quite incorrigible.”
“Doubtless. First, I was a poor medical student, and six cigars per diem cost fourteen shillings a-week,—thirty-one pounds, eight shillings, a-year. A good sum to give for an artificial want—enough to have fed and clothed a child.”
“You're weak on the point of brats, Urquhart. Do you remember the little Russ we picked up in the cellar at Sebastopol? I do believe you'd have adopted and brought it home with you if it had not died.”
Should I? But as Treherne said, it died.
“Secondly, thirty-one pounds, eight shillings per annum was a good deal to give for a purely selfish enjoyment, annoying to almost everybody except the smoker, and at the time of smoking—especially when to the said smoker it is sure to grow from a mere accidental enjoyment into an irresistible necessity—a habit to which he becomes the most utter slave. Now, a man is only half a man who allows himself to become the slave of any habit whatsoever.”