An old soldier was walking home with a beefsteak in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other, when some one yelled, "Halt! Attention!" Instantly the veteran came to a stand; and, as his arms took the position of "attention," eggs and meat went tumbling into the street, the accustomed nerves responding involuntarily to the old stimulus.
Paul evidently understood the force of habit. "I find, then," he declares, "the law, that to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law in my mind, and bringing me into captivity, under the law of sin, which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" He referred to the ancient custom of binding a murderer face to face with the dead body of his victim, until suffocated by its stench and dissolution.
"I would give a world, if I had it," said an unfortunate wretch, "to be a true man; yet in twenty-four hours I may be overcome and disgraced with a shilling's worth of sin."
"How shall I a habit break?"
As you did that habit make.
As you gathered, you must lose;
As you yielded, now refuse.
Thread by thread the strands we twist,
Till they bind us, neck and wrist;
Thread by thread the patient hand
Must untwine, ere free we stand;
As we builded, stone by stone,
We must toil unhelped, alone,
Till the wall is overthrown.
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE CIGARETTE
We are so accustomed to the sight and smell of tobacco that we entirely overlook the fact that the tobacco of commerce in all its forms is the product of a poisonous weed. It is first a narcotic and then an irritant poison. It has its place in all toxicological classifications together with its proper antidotes.
Tobacco has not achieved its almost universal popularity without strong opposition. In England King James launched his famous "Counterblaste" against its use. In Turkey, where men and women are alike slaves to its fascination, tobacco was originally forbidden under severe penalties; the loss of the ears, the slitting of the nostrils and even death itself being penalties imposed for the infraction of the law forbidding the use of tobacco in any form. Since then pipes, cigars, snuff and chewing tobacco have become popularized and tobacco in some form or another is used by almost every nation. The last development in the form of tobacco using was the cigarette rolled between the fingers, and the worst form of the cigarette is the manufactured article sold in cheap packages and freely used by boys who in many cases have not reached their teens.
The manufactured American cigarette seems to be especially deadly in its effect. It is said to contain five and one-half per cent. of nicotine, or more than twice as much as the Cuban-made cigarette contains, and more than six times as much as is contained in the Turkish cigarette.