THE CASE FOR SMOKING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9142, 25 August 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE CASE FOR SMOKING.

But. as was said before, the denunciation of excess does not imply the condemnation of moderate indulgence, and smoking has a good many things to be said in its favour. It has the useful quality of staying the pangs of hunger in those accustomed to its use. In the Franco-German war the German soldiers managed, by the help of tobacco, to do without food for hours while executing long marches and undergoing great fatigue. The second battle of Orleans was, it is said, fought and won on tobacco, as the transport department had broken down, and the German army was without proper rations for thirty-six hours. It lures many a busy man into talking half an hour of necessary idleness. The cynic who described fishing as the waste of a good opj>ortunity for doing nothing," might probably say the same of smoking ; but, in fact, it is an improved edition of doing nothing ; it gives the necessary cessation from work without the remorseful, conscience-pricking feeling of being lazy. And smoke is the signand seal of companionable silence. Friends, host, and guest may pass happy hours together thus, the former not fatigued by the effort of entertaining, the latter not bored by the lack of it, all needful sociability expressed by the occasional handing of a match or the exchange of a tobacco-pouch. How restful is the companionship that does not demand conversation need not be said. It is peace without loneliness, silence without solitude. It is not recorded how Carlyle and Tennyson once spent hours together without uttering a word, content with exchanging the discourse of puffs and smokewreaths '! At last the poet rose to go. Then the philosopher, the preacher of the gospel of silence (in thirty volumes) found a voice. " Eh, Alfred, man," he exclaimed, " we've had a grand evening; come again soon." And who shall say that the thoughts bred "under the sweet influence of nicotine in the minds of such men, or even men of lesser calibre, are, in the —only smoke. —The Hospital.