omotes poverty. This narcotic
lulls to sleep all pecuniary economy. Every pipe may not, indeed, cost
so much as that jewelled one seen by Dibdin in Vienna, which was valued
at a thousand pounds; or even as the German meerschaum which was passed
from mouth to mouth through a whole regiment of soldiers till it was
colored to perfection, having never been allowed to cool,--a bill of one
hundred pounds being ultimately rendered for the tobacco consumed. But
how heedlessly men squander money on this pet luxury! By the report of
the English University Commissioners, some ten years ago, a student's
annual tobacco-bill often amounts to forty pounds. Dr. Solly puts thirty
pounds as the lowest annual expenditure of an English smoker, and knows
many who spend one hundred and twenty pounds, and one three hundred
pounds a year, on tobacco alone. In this country the facts are hard to
obtain, but many a man smokes twelve four-cent cigars a day, and many
a man four twelve-cent cigars,--spending in either case about half
a dollar a day and not far from two hundred dollars per annum. An
industrious mechanic earns his two dollars and fifty cents a day or
a clerk his eight hundred dollars a year, spends a quarter of it on
tobacco, and the rest on his wife, children, and miscellaneous expenses.

But the impotency which marks some of the stock arguments against
tobacco extends to most of those in favor of it. My friend assures me
that every one needs some narcotic, that the American brain is too
active, and that the influence of tobacco is quieting,--great is the
enjoyment of a comfortable pipe after dinner. I grant, on observing him
at that period, that it appears so. But I also observe, that, when the
placid hour has passed away, his nervous system is more susceptible, his
hand more tremulous, his temper more irritable on slight occasions, than
during the days when the comfortable pipe chances to be omitted. The
only effect of the narcotic appears, therefore, to be a demand for
another narcotic; and there seems no decided advantage over the life
of the birds and bees, who appear to keep their nervous systems in
tolerably healthy condition with no narcotic at all.

The argument drawn from a comparison of races is no better. Germans are
vigorous and Turks are long-lived, and they are all great smokers. But
certainly the Germans do not appear so vivacious, nor the Turks so
energetic, as to afford triumphant demonstrations in behalf of the
sa