s the habit of hiring livery-rigs. The business
is just as useful as a drug-store, but no poor boy should hire equipages
for mere pleasure. To attend a funeral, or to take a sick mother or
sister out in the sunshine, is commendable. The youth who does that
rarely needs the other suggestion, however, for those who spend the
most money at a livery stable are usually seen with their mothers and
sisters the least. No young man who thinks well of himself will enter a
saloon at all. Often the worst classes in the whole country frequent
RURAL SALOONS,
men who dare not walk through the streets of any of the large cities.
Perhaps at the card-table in the groggery across the street is a man who
has come to your town to break into your employer's store! Anyway, there
is no "business" in the world which returns so little for the money
accepted as the saloon. Take
A GALLON OF WHISKY,
for instance. It is worth a dollar to a dollar and a half. It has been
taxed ninety cents by the Government, leaving it worth that much less.
Well, now, a man is expected to go into a saloon, and, for about three
tablespoonsful of this stuff, he pays ten cents in the town and fifteen
cents in the city. Your news dealer pays eight cents for an illustrated
paper, and twenty-eight cents for a popular magazine. He sells the one
for ten cents and the other for thirty-five cents, taking all the risk
of not getting a sale. If you could afford to travel with such people as
are found in saloons, in the first place, and to put such truly
abominable stuff in your mouth in the second place, you could not, even
then, in the third place, afford to give fifteen cents for what is in
fact worth less than a mill. You are in reality giving away your money
to the Government and the saloon keeper.
LET VANDERBILT SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT,
and those who have made their fortunes and their bad habits the
saloon-keeper. I have dwelt on this, because these are few young men who
are not tempted. All the above applies to tobacco. It is an utterly
obnoxious habit to use tobacco. It is the cause, together with the dough
falsely called pastry, of all the dyspepsia in our climate. It ruins the
eyes, it costs money in vast quantities, returning almost nothing in
goods, and has but one redeeming feature that I know of--it is
JUST AS BAD ON MOTHS AS IT IS ON MEN,
and it makes a musty room smell a little better. If you can keep out of
saloons and shooting galleries,
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