Amy: And just see the little boys burning up their money, too!
Mother: How very sad! They are only children, and yet they throw away their pennies and dimes. What are all these people getting for their money?
Helen: Smoke—nothing but smoke.
Mother: They get smoke, it is true, but they also get pains and aches. Tobacco laughs as it takes their money, and grows larger and stronger every day.
Percy: But, mother, can nothing be done to stop their burning up money like that?
Mother: You think some one should call out, “Stop, thief!” do you? Perhaps that was what King James, of England, thought; for when people began using it in that country, he wrote a book, in which he said that smoking was “loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs.” The Russian Government tried to put a stop to smoking by saying that if a person were caught using tobacco, his nose should be cut off. Perhaps it was thought that people who abuse smelling that way had no right to have a nose. The sultan of Turkey once put to death those who smoked, or used snuff.
Percy: I should think such laws would have stopped its use in a little while.
Mother: They did not; for people can not be made to do right in that way. They used it more than they had before. I think the best way is for the master of every body-house to say, “I will never, no, never, touch it; and I will do my best to let others know how hurtful it is, so they will not use it.” Many, very many, do not know how much harm tobacco does in the body, nor what a sinful waste of money it causes. They spend it a few pennies at a time, and do not stop to think how much it amounts to in a year or a lifetime. More money is spent for tobacco than for bread. One hundred times as much money goes up in tobacco smoke as is given to missions. Let us do all that we can to prevent this waste. No bird or animal would ever be guilty of taking into its body anything so harmful.
MINNIE AND HER CANARY.
MINNIE’S REBUKE.