only of the general tendency of the poor man's pipe that I wish to speak. I mean to say that it tends to make him satisfied with a lot which it is his chief and immediate duty to alleviate. He ought to hate and loathe his tenement-house home; and when he goes to that home in the evening, instead of sitting down in stolid selfishness to smoke, he should be active in giving his wife (who usually has the worst of it) the assistance she needs and deserves. Better the merry song, the cheerful talk, the pleasant stroll, than this dulling of the senses and the brain in smoke. Nobler the conscious misery of such a home, than the artificial lethargy of the pipe. It is an unhandsome thing in this husband to steal out of his vile surroundings into cloudland, and leave his wife and children alone to their noisome desolation.

If it does not pay this hod-carrier to smoke, it pays no man. If this man cannot smoke without injustice to others, no man can.

Ladies, the natural enemies of tobacco, relented so far during the war as to send tobacco and pipes to the soldiers, and worked with their own fair hands many a pouch. Indeed, the pouch industry continues, though we will do the ladies the justice to say that, as their pouches usually have every excellent quality except fitness for the purpose intended, few of them ever hold tobacco. Does the lady who presented General Sheridan the other evening, in New York, with those superb and highly decorated tobacco-pouches suppose the gallant General has had, or will ever have, the heart to profane such beautiful objects with the noxious weed? It is evident from these gracious concessions on the part of the ladies, that they suppose the soldier is a man whose circumstances call imperatively for the solace of smoke; and really, when the wearied men after a long day's march gathered round the camp-fire for the evening pipe, the most infuriate hater of the weed must have sometimes paused and questioned the science which forbids the indulgence. But, reader, did you ever travel in one of the forward cars of a train returning from the seat of war, when the soldiers were coming home to re-enlist? We need not attempt to describe the indescribable scene. Most readers can imagine it. We allude to it merely as a set-off to the pleasant and picturesque spectacle of the tired soldiers smoking round the camp-fire.

In truth, the soldier is the last man in the world who should smoke; for the simple reason, that while he, more than any other man, has need of all his strength, smoking robs him of part of it. It is not science alone which establishes this truth. The winning boat of Harvard University, and the losing boat of Yale, were not rowed by smokers. One of the first things demanded of a young man who is going into training for a boat-race is, Stop smoking! And he himself, long before his body has reached its highest point of purity and development, will become conscious of the lowering and disturbing effect of smoking one inch of a mild cigar. No smoker who has ever trained severely for a race, or a game, or a fight, needs to be told that smoking reduces the tone of the system and diminishes all the forces of the body. He knows it. He has been as conscious of it as a boy is conscious of the effects of his first cigar. Let the Harvard crew smoke during the last two months of their training, and let the Yale men abstain, and there is one individual prepared to risk a small sum upon Yale's winning back her laurels.

A soldier should be in training always. Compelled to spend nine tenths of his time in laboriously doing nothing, he is called upon occasionally, for a few hours or days or weeks, to put forth exertions which task human endurance to the uttermost. The soldier, too, of all men, should have quiet nerves; for the phantoms of war scare more men than its real dangers, and men's bodies can shake when their souls are firm. That two and two make four is not a truth more unquestionably certain than that smoking does diminish a soldier's power of endurance, and does make him more susceptible to imaginary dangers. If a regiment were to be raised for the hardest service of which men can ever be capable, and that service were to be performed for a series of campaigns, it would be necessary to exclude from the commissariat, not tobacco only, but coffee and tea. Each man, in short, would have to be kept in what prize-fighters call "condition"; by which term they simply mean the natural state of the body, uncontaminated by poison, and unimpaired by indolence or excess. Every man is in duty bound to be "in condition" at all times; but the soldier,—it is part of his profession to be "in condition." When remote posterity comes to read of the millions and millions of dollars expended during the late war in curing soldiers untouched by bayonet or bullet, the enthusiasm of readers will not be excited by the generosity displayed in bestowing those millions. People will lay down the book and exclaim: "How ignorant were our poor ancestors of the laws of life! A soldier in hospital without a wound! How extremely absurd!"

To this weighty and decisive objection minor ones may be added. The bother and vexation arising from the pipe were very great during the campaigns of the late war. Half the time the smokers, being deprived of their accustomed stimulant, were in that state of uneasy longing which smokers and other stimulators know. Men were shot during the war merely because they would strike a light and smoke. The desire sometimes overcame all considerations of prudence and soldierly duty. A man out on picket, of a chilly night, knowing perfectly well that lighting his pipe would have the twofold effect of revealing his presence and inviting a bullet, was often unable to resist the temptation. Many men, too, risked capture in seeking what smokers call "a little fire." A fine, stalwart officer of a Minnesota regiment, whose natural forces, if he had given nature a fair chance, would have been abundantly sufficient for him without the aid of any stimulant, has told me there were nights when he would have gladly given a month's pay for a light. Readers probably remember the incident related in the newspapers of one of our smoking generals, who, after being defeated by the enemy, heard of the arrival of gunboats which assured his safety, and promised to restore his fortunes. The first thing he did was to send an aid on board a gunboat to ask if they had any cigars. He was right in so doing. It was a piece of strategy necessitated by the circumstances. Let any man who has been in the habit of smoking ten to twenty cigars a day be suddenly deprived of them at a time when there is a great strain upon body and mind, and he will find himself reduced to a state bordering upon imbecility. Knowing what I know of the smoking habits of some officers of high rank, I should tremble for the success of any difficult operation, to be conducted by them in presence of an enemy, if their cigars had given out the evening before; nor could a spy do his employers a better service than to creep into the tents of some generals the night before an engagement, and throw all their cigars and tobacco into a pail of water.

Of all men, therefore, the soldier is the very last man who could find his account in a practice which lowers the tone of his health, reduces his power of endurance, litters his knapsack, pesters him with a system of flints and tinder, and endangers his efficiency in critical moments. If all the world smoked, still the soldier should abstain.

Sailors and other prisoners experience so many dull hours, and possess so many unused faculties, that some cordial haters of tobacco have thought that such persons might be justified in a habit which only lessens what they have in superfluity. In other words, sailors, being in a situation extremely unfavorable to spiritual life, ought not merely to yield to the lowering influence of the forecastle, but add to it one more benumbing circumstance. On the contrary, they ought to strive mightily against the paralyzing effects of