“Isn’t it awful, mamma? I should not want to marry a man who drinks.”
“I sincerely hope you never will. But there are other habits that are evil in their effects. Smoking, for example.”
“O, mamma, smoking isn’t inherited, is it?”
“Well, I don’t know but we might say that it is. I knew a woman who was an inveterate smoker. When her baby was born, it cried night and day until one day the mother, nearly distracted, took the pipe from her mouth and put it between the baby’s lips and it stopped crying at once, and after that she took that method to still its cries. You see, it had been under the influence of tobacco all the time before it was born, and when it no longer felt that influence it was uncomfortable until it had the tobacco again. You know how hard it is for a man to give up smoking. All poisons by long use make such an impression on the body that it suffers when the poisons are taken away.
“Tobacco paralyzes the nerves of sensation, so that feeling is lessened. That is why men like to use it. They think they feel better, when in reality they feel less, or not at all; and to have no feeling or power to feel is a dangerous condition. Pain, or sensation, is our great protection, and to remove sensation by paralysis is to render ourselves open to danger. This paralytic condition may become an inheritance. Many children have 80 infantile paralysis because their fathers are users of tobacco.”
“I am glad my father doesn’t use it,” exclaimed Helen with emphasis.
“Indeed, you may well be glad, and you can see to it that your children have the same cause for rejoicing. The girls of to-day have a wonderful influence on all time, the present and the future. I wish they knew how to use it wisely.”
“But girls think it is manly to smoke. I’ve heard lots of them say so. Stella Wilson says she wouldn’t marry a man that didn’t smoke; and Kate Barrows said the other day that she thought girls had no right to interfere with the enjoyment of men by asking them to give up smoking. She said she knew how nice it was, for she had tried it; and she said the most fashionable women smoke, and she means to smoke when she has a home of her own.”
“All of which only proves that she is a poor, ignorant girl who does not know her own value to herself, or to the world. She may yet have cause to weep over children made weak and nervous, or who have died because of her ignorance.”
“Isn’t it sad that ignorance does not save us from punishment?”