its effects are pathological, not physiological,—­and that its use should therefore be exceptional, not habitual.  Not tending to the preservation of a normal state, but at best to the correction of some abnormal one, its whole value, if it have any, lies in the rarity of its application.  To apply a powerful drug at a certain hour every day is like a schoolmaster’s whipping his pupil at a certain hour every day:  the victim may become inured, but undoubtedly the specific value of the remedy must vanish with the repetition.

Thus much would be true, were it proved that tobacco is in some cases apparently beneficial.  No drug is beneficial, when constantly employed.  But, furthermore, if not beneficial, it then is injurious.  As Dr. Holmes has so forcibly expounded, every medicine is in itself hurtful.  All noxious agents, according to him, cost a patient, on an average, five per cent. of his vital power; that is, twenty times as much would kill him.  It is believed that they are sometimes indirectly useful; it is known that they are always directly hurtful.  That is, I have a neighbor on one side who takes tobacco to cure his dyspepsia, and a neighbor on the other side who takes blue pill for his infirmities generally.  The profit of the operation may be sure or doubtful; the outlay is certain, and to be deducted in any event.  I have no doubt, my dear Madam, that your interesting son has learned to smoke, as he states, in order to check that very distressing toothache which so hindered his studies; but I sincerely think it would be better to have the affliction removed by a dentist at a cost of fifty cents than by a drug at an expense of five per cent. of vital power.

Fortunately, when it comes to the practical test, the whole position is conceded to our hands, and the very devotees of tobacco are false to their idol.  It is not merely that the most fumigatory parent dissuades his sons from the practice; but there is a more remarkable instance.  If any two classes can be singled out in the community as the largest habitual consumers of tobacco, it must be the college students and the city “roughs” or “rowdies,” or whatever the latest slang name is,—­for these roysterers, like oysters, incline to names with an r in.  Now the “rough,” when brought to a physical climax, becomes the prize-fighter; and the college student is seen in his highest condition as the prize-oarsman; and both these representative men, under such circumstances of ambition, straightway abandon tobacco.  Such a concession, from such a quarter, is worth all the denunciations of good Mr. Trask.  Appeal, O anxious mother! from Philip smoking to Philip training.  What your progeny will not do for any considerations of ethics or economy, to save his sisters’ olfactories or the atmosphere of the family altar,—­that he does unflinchingly at one word from the stroke-oar or the commodore.  In so doing, he surrenders every inch of the ground, and owns unequivocally that he is in better condition without tobacco.  The old traditions of training are in some other respects being softened:  strawberries are no longer contraband, and the last agonies of thirst are no longer a part of the prescription; but training and tobacco are still incompatible.  There is not a regatta or a prize-fight in which the betting would not be seriously affected by the discovery that either party used the beguiling weed.