"
"Do not be afraid, father; it will not be necessary to establish
either a quarantine or a lazaretto on our account."
"Besides, any of the boys," said Mrs. Becker, "that acquire the habit,
will, by so doing, voluntarily banish themselves from my levees."
"It is an extraordinary habit that, smoking," observed Mrs. Wolston.
"Yes," said Becker; "and what makes the habit more singular is, that
it holds out no allurements to seduce its votaries. Generally, the
path to vice, or to a bad habit, is strewn with roses that hide their
thorns, but such is not the case with smoking; in order to acquire
this habit, a variety of disagreeable difficulties have to be
overcome, and a considerable amount of disgust and sickness must be
borne before the stomach is tutored to withstand the nauseous fumes."
"In point of fact," observed Wolston, "if, instead of being made part
and parcel of the appliances of a fashionable man, cigars and
meershaums were classed in the pharmacopoeia with emetics and
cataplasms, there is not a human being but would bemoan his fate if
compelled to undergo a dose."
"Just so," added Becker; "the great and sole attraction of tobacco to
young people consists in its being to them a forbidden thing; the
apple of Eve is of all time--it hangs from every tree, and takes
myriads of shapes.
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