d to myself, "If I smoke more than I ought to
now in these war times, and when my salary is small, what would I do
if I had gratuitous and unlimited supply?" Then and there, twenty-four
years ago, I quit once and forever. It made a new man of me. Much of
the time the world looked blue before that, because I was looking
through tobacco smoke. Ever since the world has been full of sunshine,
and though I have done as much work as any one of my age, God has
blessed me, it seems to me, with the best health that a man ever had.

I say that no minister of religion can afford to smoke. Put in my hand
all the money expended by Christian men in Brooklyn for tobacco, and I
will support three orphan asylums as well and as grandly as the three
great orphan asylums already established. Put into my hand the money
spent by the Christians of America for tobacco, and I will clothe,
shelter, and feed all the suffering poor of the continent. The
American Church gives a million dollars a year for the salvation of
the heathen, and American Christians smoke five million dollars' worth
of tobacco.

I stand here to-day in the presence of a vast multitude of young
people who are forming their habits. Between seventeen and twenty-five
years of age a great many young men get on them habits in the use of
tobacco that they never get over. Let me say to all my young friends,
you can not afford to smoke, you can not afford to chew. You either
take very good tobacco, or you take very cheap tobacco. If it is
cheap, I will tell you why it is cheap. It is made of burdock, and
lampblack, and sawdust, and colt's-foot, and plantain leaves, and
fuller's earth, and salt, and alum, and lime, and a little tobacco,
and you can not afford to put such a mess as that in your mouth. But
if you use expensive tobacco, do you not think it would be better for
you to take that amount of money which you are now expending for this
herb, and which you will expend during the course of your life if you
keep the habit up, and with it buy a splendid farm and make the
afternoon and the evening of your life comfortable?

There are young men whose life is going out inch by inch from
cigarettes. Now, do you not think it would be well for you to listen
to the testimony of a merchant of New York, who said this: "In early
life I smoked six cigars a day at six and a half cents each. They
averaged that. I thought to myself one day, I'll just put aside all I
consume in cigars and all I