o realize the harm that tobacco is doing to his health, he has simply
to stop its use for a short time and watch the effect on his system.

Tobacco is not a food that God intended man to eat. In man's case it
feeds only a craving that it has itself created. But the leaves of the
tobacco plant do serve as food for the large, green worms that live and
thrive in tobacco fields. Yes; tobacco is "very good" for the "creeping
things" for which it was created; but it was not intended as food for
man.

Could John and his cousins have understood all this when the next
tobacco famine came to them, it seems that each would surely have
resisted the temptation to stoop down, pick up a partly chewed quid of
tobacco, cram it greedily into his watering mouth, and chew it as though
it was the sweetest morsel he had ever tasted. But the boys did not
know. They thought such things were manly.

CHAPTER IV

Early School Days

By the time John was eight years old, the evil influences with which he
had been surrounded in his uncle's home were rapidly telling on him. To
be sure, there was still the same pathetic expression in his deep, brown
eyes, and now and then there could be observed in them a mischievous
glance or a merry twinkle; but his general appearance was that of a
sadly neglected child. Still the busy aunt took little notice either
of him or of her own boys.

In his heart John was longing for someone to take an interest in him and
to love him--someone to whom he could go with his boyish heartaches and
from whom he could gain the sympathy for which his heart was craving.
To be sure, his father was still kind, and sometimes John would imagine
that he could even feel his father's love. At such times the boy would
press closer to his parent, hoping that he would at least with his arm
caress him; but his father did not understand. He could see only the
outward roughness; and he said in his heart:

"It is all because he has never had a chance. He has grown up here on
the prairie like a wild thing. He has never been to school, and I must
send him at once."

With this purpose in his heart John's father decided to return with his
child to the place that had once been his happy home. In making the
change there were, of course, many things to take into consideration.
But under the circumstances, to go seemed the best and proper thing to
do. The sad events, he reasoned, were all in a lifetime; and he must
make the best of the