In the Amherst graduating class for the same year, the non-users of tobacco had gained twenty-four per cent more in weight, thirty-seven per cent more in height, and forty-two per cent more in growth of chest than had the smokers. In lung capacity, the tobacco users had lost two cubic inches, while the abstainers had gained six cubic inches.
As a wet-blanket upon ambition, a drag upon development, and a handicap upon success in life, the cigarette has few equals and no superiors. The stained fingers and sallow complexion of the youthful cigarette smoker will generally result in his being rejected when applying for a position. The employer knows that the non-smoking boy is much more likely to succeed in his work and win his way to a position of trust and influence than is the "cigarette fiend." Especially in these days of sharp competition, no boy can afford to contract a habit which will so handicap him in making his way as will the cigarette habit.
CHAPTER XI
THE HEART-PUMP AND ITS PIPE-LINE SYSTEM
THE BLOOD VESSELS
Where the Body Does its Real Eating. When once the food has been dissolved in the food-tube and absorbed by the cells of its walls, the next problem is how it shall be sent all over the body to supply the different parts that are hungry for it; for we must remember that the real eating of the food is done by the billions upon billions of tiny living cells of which the body is made up.
The Pipe Lines of the Body. What do we do when we want to carry water, or oil, or sewage, quickly and surely from one place to another? We put down a pipe line. We are wonderfully proud of our systems of water and gas supply, and of the great pipe lines that carry oil from wells in Ohio and Indiana clear to the Atlantic coast. But the very first man that ever laid a pipe to carry water was simply imitating nature—only about ten or fifteen million years behind her. No sooner has our food passed through the cells in the wall of the food-tube, than it goes straight into a set of tiny tubes—the blood-pipes, or blood vessels—which carry it to the heart; and the heart pumps it all over the body.