If you ask what tobacco is good for, the best answer will be, to tell you what it will do to a man or boy who uses it, and then let you answer the question for yourselves.
Tobacco contains something called nicotine (nĭk´o tĭn). This is a strong poison. One drop of it is enough to kill a dog. In one cigar there is enough, if taken pure, to kill two men.
Even to work upon tobacco, makes people pale and sickly. Once I went into a snuff mill, and the man who had the care of it showed me how the work was done.
The mill stood in a pretty place, beside a little stream which turned the mill-wheel. Tall trees bent over it, and a fresh breeze was blowing through the open windows. Yet the smell of the tobacco was so strong that I had to go to the door many times, for a breath of pure air.
I asked the man if it did not make him sick to work there.
He said: "It made me very sick for the first few weeks. Then I began to get used to it, and now I don't mind it."
He was like the boys who try to learn to smoke. It almost always makes them sick at first; but they think it will be manly to keep on. At last, they get used to it.
The sickness is really the way in which the boy's body is trying to say to him: "There is danger here; you are playing with poison. Let me stop you before great harm is done."
Perhaps you will say: "I have seen men smoke cigars, even four or five in a day, and it didn't kill them."