HATE Tobacco. I don't hate all its devotees. Oh, no. In its ranks are men who would gladly die for their country if need be; and yet no slave whom they would lay down a life to free, shall be more truly a slave, than are these patriots to the tyrant Tobacco.
Well—what then? manhood inquires, with his hat cocked defiantly, and his arms a-kimbo. What then? Only this: we women so wish you hadn't so disgusting and dirty a habit. Now reach out your hand, take a seat beside me, and let me talk to you about it.
In the first place, bear with a little egotism. I am not six feet high; I belong to no Woman's Rights Convention, if that be a crime in your eyes. I'm just a merry woman, four feet in stature, who would much rather love than hate everything and everybody in this lovely world, if I could; who had much rather have friends than enemies if I could, without muzzling my thoughts, or my pen.
If not—I am going to shut up my umbrella, and let the shower come. I hate tobacco. I am a clean creature, and it smells bad. Smells is a mild word; but I will use it, being a woman. I deny your right to smell bad in my presence, or the presence of any of our clean sisterhood. I deny your right to poison the air of our parlors, or our bed-rooms, with your breath, or your tobacco-saturated clothing, even though you may be our husbands. Terrible creature! I think I hear you say; I am glad you are not my wife. So am I. How would you like it, had you arranged your parlor with dainty fingers, and were rejoicing in the sweet-scented mignonette, and violets, and heliotrope, in the pretty vase on your table—forgetting in your happiness that Bridget and Biddy had vexed your soul the greater part of the day—and in your nicely-cushioned chair, were resting your spirit even more than your body, to have a man enter, with that detestable bar-room odor, and spoil it all? Or worse: light a cigar or pipe in your very presence, and puff away as if it were the heaven to you which it appears to be to him. The "Guide to Women" would tell you that you should "let him smoke, for fear he might do worse." Suppose we try that boot on the other foot, and let women drink for the same reason? Of course you see, to begin with, that I consider woman as much an individual as her husband. With just as much right to an opinion, a taste, a smell, or a preference of any kind, as himself; and just as much right to express and maintain it, if she see fit. Now, to my belief, drinking would brutify her physically and morally no quicker than tobacco does him. Because a man is able to stand on his two legs, it does not follow that his perceptions are clear; that his temper is not irritable, or morose; that his vitality by long abuse is not nearly exhausted, and that, when he should be in the prime and vigor of a glorious manhood. It does not follow that there are not empty chairs around his table, and little graves in the churchyard, for which he is responsible. It does not follow that a sharp answer, a careless indifference, has not taken the place of loving words and an earnest desire to contribute his share of sunlight in his home. When I say that tobacco brutifies its devotees, I know what I am talking about. When a man carries his lighted pipe, or cigar, into the bed-room of a sick child, to whom pure air is life or death, we may infer that his selfishness in this regard has reached its climax. Or when he continues to smoke in the presence of his wife, knowing that sick headache is the sure result, we may draw the same inference. Not to mention that your smoker always selects the pleasantest window, or the best seat on a piazza, or the shadiest seat under a tree, forcing the ladies of the family, or the circle, wherever he is, to breathe this bad odor, or remove to some other locality. Nor does the bland "I trust this is not unpleasant to you" help the matter; while women, so much more magnanimous than men, receive this reward for their "polite" evasion of the subject.
I go into a newspaper store to purchase a magazine; there stands a gentleman (?) at my side with a lighted cigar in his mouth, coolly looking over the papers at his leisure. If I beat a hasty retreat to another establishment of the same kind, I find other gentlemen (?) similarly employed. If I get into a street car, even if no one is "smoking upon the platform," five out of ten of the male passengers will have parted with their cigars only at the moment of entering, poisoning still further the close car-atmosphere with this hated effluvia. At places of evening amusement, concerts, lectures and the like, the same thing occurs; indeed, they often repeat the horror by renewing the tobacco-smoke in the intervals during the performance. If I walk in the street, vile breaths are puffed in my face from pipes or cigars by every second gentleman (?) who passes. I am getting sick of "gentlemen;" it would be a relief if the great showman would advertise us a man. If a "gentleman" comes in to make an evening call, he deposits his cigar stump on your front steps just before entering, and very likely lights another in your front entry before departing. The man who brings you a parcel, often stands in the entry smoking, while waiting further orders. The emissary of the butcher, or grocer, perfumes your kitchen and area in the same manner. Your cook's male "cousin" smokes when he makes his evening calls. In the railroad car you are stifled with the remains of tobacco-smoke. In steamboats, in hotels, it is the same, whensoever a male creature enters. If a lady exerts herself to get up, or oversee, or engineer, a nice dinner for some gentleman (?) friends of her husband's, they prove their appreciation of her good dinner and her good company, by retiring to another room than that the hostess is in, the moment they have eaten to satiety, in order that they may smoke till it is time to leave her very hospitable house.
Said a prominent editor one day to me: "You are right, madam, the moment a man becomes wedded to tobacco he becomes a—hog!" This is a strong way of putting it, but the subject is strong in every sense. Physicians will tell you that men who would resent the imputation that they were not good husbands and fathers, will selfishly poison the air of a sick-room and distress the breathing of the invalid without remorse. I repeat it, I am firmly of the opinion, that tobacco brutifies equally with drink. The process may be slower, but it is just as sure. A drunkard will sometimes own that drink hurts him; or that he drinks too much; or would be better without it; a smoker never. 'Tis true, he will admit that Tom Jones, or Sam Smith, smokes too much; but not that he ever did, or shall. In fact, he is sure that in his case tobacco is beneficial; "it soothes him when he is irritable," which, thanks to tobacco, is so often, that the soothing process is perpetual. A man said one day to his comrade in the street cars, "Tom, I really think I should have given up smoking long since, had not my wife constantly said it was so disagreeable." What better proof could he have given of its brutalizing tendency?
I know no place where "smoking not allowed," is not a dead letter, except in church. Even there the cigar stump is often tossed away at the church porch, and men sit impatiently fingering the vile weed which is destined to console them, the minute the benediction shall have been pronounced; now, when a gentleman (?) becomes so enslaved by this bad habit, that neither the disgust of the female inmates of his own house, or other houses, who suffer by it, fails to move him, even though they may not, for the sake of peace, complain; and when the terrible sight of this smoker's own little son, already going to and from school with cigar and satchel in company, does not shame him; when any society, how intelligent soever, is distasteful, nay, unbearable to him, where tobacco is not permitted, for one I would not toss up a pin for the choice between that man and a drunkard.
People say: Whence all these matinées of all kinds, operatic and other, that are springing up in our cities? I answer—Tobacco! "No smoking allowed here"—if over the entrance of Paradise—and the men would prefer their pipe with the accompaniment of the infernal regions. A man can't very well talk with a pipe in his mouth. If a pipe he prefers to all things else, from the time he returns to his house at night till he goes to bed, his wife naturally wearies of watching that smoke curl, though she may be an angel in his eyes in every other respect. It is dull music, after the petty little musquito-stinging household cares of the day, to which even the best mothers and most capable housekeepers are subject, in a greater or less degree. "When he lights that cigar every night I want to scream," said a lovely woman to me. "I am so tired of the house at night; I want him to talk to me, or go out with me; I should take hold of my cares and duties the next day with so much more heart if he did. I love my home; I love my babies; I love my husband; but oh, he don't know how tired and nervous I often get by night, and that silence, and that suffocating smoke, are so intolerable to me then." Why don't she say so? you ask. Why? because women are so hungry for a little love, and find it so impossible to live without it, that they often endure any amount of this kind of selfishness rather than hazard its loss for a day. Now, is this right? Is it what a wife is entitled to, after trying all day to make home bright and happy for her husband?