Mother: She had often asked him not to use tobacco, but the habit was so strong that he felt that he could not give it up. At last he said one day: “I think you are as much a slave to tea as I am to tobacco. If you will stop drinking tea, I will use no more tobacco.” That put the matter in a new light, and she told him she would think about it. She knew that tea contained a poison, and that it did her no real good, but only harm; so she finally decided to drink it no more. When she next met her friend, she told him that she would use no more tea, and in a short time he left off using tobacco.
Elmer: That must be what the Bible means when it says that we should “provoke one another to good works.”
Mother: Yes, that is one way. You know I said when we began talking that tobacco was a thief. I will now tell you of something it steals from the master of the house besides his health.
Percy: I wonder if it is money. I know that is what thieves almost always try to get.
Mother: You guessed it at once. Let us see how much this robber will take from a man if he once lets it into the house. One who is a very moderate smoker will spend about forty dollars a year for cigars. People in England would call that sum seven or eight pounds. Suppose a man should smoke thirty years. Here is an example for you, Amy.
Amy: Twelve hundred dollars. How much would that be in English money?
$40
30
———-
$1300
Mother: About two hundred and forty-six pounds. That would buy him a nice little home, would it not? Or if he was a lover of books, he could get a good library for that sum. And you must remember that this is for a moderate smoker. A merchant said that by saving the money he would have spent for cigars, he laid up twenty-nine thousand dollars, or nearly six thousand pounds. If he had spent it for tobacco, what would he have had for his money?
Percy: Smoke.
Amy: A dirty mouth and bad breath.