“Now take a long breath.”
But, alas, I did not breathe; I swallowed, and while the smoke penetrated me and spread throughout my interior, it did not take the correct route. I began to strangle, and my brother got excited.
“Blow it out, you damn fool!” he cried. “You’ll choke!”
I did choke. I did even worse; I became very ill, and the spectacle which so intrigued the young ladies of the Seminary that day was not that of a young gentleman going nonchalantly to Hell by the cigarette route. Instead, they saw a very sick boy rolling on the sidewalk trying desperately to stem a distressing internal upheaval.
It was several days later before I had enough courage to try again, and I debated within myself whether or not God had caused me to be so ill in order to show me that smoking was a sin. But I had definitely committed myself to the Devil, so a few days later I begged a dime from my father and bought a package of Drums and another of Sweet Caporals, the two most popular brands of cigarettes. With these, and a supply of matches, I went behind the barn. I made a neat pile of sawdust to lie upon, and there I remained the whole afternoon, smoking one cigarette after another. I was terribly ill at first, but gradually improved until the last three or four gave me no trouble. I did not have much appetite for dinner that night, but I had conquered the cigarette and I felt a glow of pride at the fact that I had got a very good start in the direction of the bad place.
The basis of my overwhelming desire to smoke cigarettes was the fact that cigarette-smoking when I was a boy in Farmington was one of the major sins. It ranked with adultery and just a little ahead of murder and theft. The Preachers called them coffin nails and delivered violent sermons against them, and every once in a while an evangelist would come to town with medical charts showing the effect of tobacco upon the interior human organs. But the fact that it was bad physically for growing boys was seldom stressed at all; we were impressed instead with the fact that God thought it a sin to smoke cigarettes, although it did not appear that it was a sin for the tobacconist to sell them. That was business.
Many efforts were made to reform me after I had begun to smoke. My mother said she had hoped I wouldn’t, but that was all she said, and my father said he did not give a hoot whether I smoked or not, but that he hoped I would not be a fool and overdo it. He himself had learned the art of chewing tobacco when he was a boy of seven in Mississippi, and so far as I have ever been able to learn, God had never called him to account. He died at the age of seventy-nine, suddenly, and a slab of plug-cut was in his pocket. It is impossible for me to believe that God refused him entrance into whatever Heaven there may be on account of his habit, which he thoroughly enjoyed.
But the Preachers and the Brothers and Sisters did not agree with my parents, nor would they admit that it was none of their business. On the contrary, they said that it was the Lord’s business, and since they were the duly accredited agents of the Lord, appointed by Him to lead Farmington into the paths of righteousness, it was their business also. When Brother Fontaine was our Methodist pastor he did not look with disfavor upon chewing, because he himself was seldom without a chew and presumably had an indulgence from God, but he looked upon the cigarette as an invention of the Devil. In this view he was upheld by the Ladies’ Aid Society and the Farmington branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. And the W. C. T. U., with the possible exception of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, was and is the world’s best example of an organization maintained for the sole purpose of minding other people’s business.
The hullabaloo over my smoking only made me more determined to smoke until my insides turned black and I was called home by Satan and transformed into a tobacco demon. For that reason I probably smoked too much. As a matter of principle I always lighted a cigarette just in front of the Southern Methodist church, and in front of the home of my uncle, who was an enemy of anything that provided physical pleasure and contentment. I always smoked another as I passed the Northern Methodist church, the scene of the McConnell revival orgy, and still another in front of the Christian church, in memory of Brother Nations. That was four in half a mile, and of course was too many, but sometimes I was not permitted to finish all of them. Frequently a Brother or a Sister, seeing me thus flaunting my sin on the public highway, snatched the nasty thing from my mouth and gave me a lecture that dripped religion and was principally concerned with the fate of boys who defied God and Jesus Christ by smoking cigarettes. One Sister asked me:
“Where did you get the vile things?”