THE SMOKING BOYS OF THE PERIOD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 542, 14 February 1870, Page 3

THE SMOKING BOYS OF THE PERIOD.

This is pre-eminently an age of precociousness, but we question whether a more dangerous symptom of early apprenticeship in adult habits is to be met with than that which distinguishes the smoking boy of the period. A day or two ago (says a correspondent) there was encountered, vigorously puffing at a short, and apparently well-uaed clay pipe, a remarkably diminutive male, the number of whose tender years was ascertained on inquiry to be five ! Now as Milton scribbled and Watt experimentalised almost in infancy, it waa not altogether without a thrill of admiration that this prodigy of an urchin was expostulated with. He smoked so like a philosopher ! He may have been a man in disguise, with a man's brain and needing a man's relaxation, and anything may be forgiven a boy, who lives to invent a steamengine, or compose a " Paradise Lost." But it is quite certain that all smoking boys cannot be accounted for on this benevolent and pleasant theory. For if a confirmed smoker at five is a phenomenon, at fifteen he is a common type of fool. "We defy anybody with his eyes about him to walk half a mile in a well-populated locality without meeting boys with young bodies, old faces, and smoking apparatus to match. This early smoking is as bad as it possibly can be. Smoking may or may not hurt the adult, but all doctors are agreed that under its baneful operation not only is " the child the father of the man," but of the short and unhealthy man. Nor have boys families to support and taxes to pay — cares to coax and nerves to soothe. They smoke with the simple object of considering themselves manly, and with the simple effect of being sick. ; Why have we not a v parental despotism ? " Why cannot an act of Parliament impose a heavy fine on a smoking silly child of fifteen? What can English mothers, sisters, nurses be about, when columns of careless smoke are I allowed to issue from the lips of a baby of five ? •