Dick found this out for himself, to his bitter regret. And besides this, do you think that his conduct showed strength of mind? He began the practice of smoking, not because he believed it to be right, but because men smoked. He was only a boy, yet he wished to appear a man—that is, to appear what he was not.
What could be more weak than for a boy to have no reason for doing a thing than that men do it? But it led to something worse. He was smoking on the sly, and to conceal it he became a liar. He lied in the school by his conduct, he lied at home by his words.
We could have respected him, although we pitied him, had he smoked openly and taken the consequences; but who can respect a coward? He is not worthy of the name of man. Dick continued to smoke after he left school, and was apprenticed in a large warehouse.
Here again the old desire to be like men influenced him. They had cigars, he must have one; they smoked, he must do so. This conduct had its invariable effects. He became the associate of "fast" young men—got into debt—learned to drink—stayed out late at night—and before his apprenticeship had ended, was ruined in health; and but for the indulgence of his employers would have been discharged in disgrace. Was that acting the part of a man?
This happened many years ago. Last week amidst a crowd who surrounded a polling booth, there stood a man about forty years of age—he looked twenty years older. On his head was a battered hat; he wore a seedy, black coat; both his hands were in his pockets, and in his mouth the stump of a cigar which had been half-smoked by another man; his face was bloated, his eyes bleared and languid. Even the vulgar crowd looked at him with contempt.
I looked into his face thinking there was in it a resemblance to one I had known. Slowly and painfully came the sad truth, that the drunken creature was Dick Harris; he had become a man but he was a lost man.
It has often been said, "How great a matter a little fire kindleth." The spark which kindled a blaze among Dick's evil passions, was the spark which lit the tobacco pipe at school. Bad habits are easily acquired, but they are hard to get rid of. See what smoking had done for Dick. It led him to drink, and the two habits have left him a wreck.
But you say to me, "There are many thousands who smoke, and yet are strong men." It is so. But in almost all cases these strong smokers did not begin the habit while they were boys; if they had done so, the likelihood is, they never would have become strong men. Besides, how much stronger they might have been if they had never smoked!