The argument is irresistible,—­or rather, it is not so much an argument as a plea of guilty under the indictment.  The prime devotees of tobacco voluntarily abstain from it, like Lord Raglan and Admiral Napier, when they wish to be in their best condition.  But are we ever, any of us, in too good condition?  Have all the sanitary conventions yet succeeded in detecting one man, in our high-pressure America, who finds himself too well?  If a man goes into training for the mimic contest, why not for the actual one?  If he needs steady nerves and a cool head for the play of life,—­and even prize-fighting is called “sporting,”—­why not for its earnest?  Here we are all croaking that we are not in the health in which our twentieth birthday found us, and yet we will not condescend to the wise abstinence which even twenty practises.  Moderate training is simply a rational and healthful life.

So palpable is this, that there is strong reason to believe that the increased attention to physical training is operating against tobacco.  If we may trust literature, as has been shown, its use is not now so great as formerly, in spite of the vague guesses of alarmists.  “It is estimated,” says Mr. Coles, “that the consumption of tobacco in this country is eight times as great as in France and three times as great as in England, in proportion to the population”; but there is nothing in the world more uncertain than “It is estimated.”  It is frequently estimated, for instance, that nine out of ten of our college students use tobacco; and yet by the statistics of the last graduating class at Cambridge it appears that it is used by only thirty-one out of seventy-six.  I am satisfied that the extent of the practice is often exaggerated.  In a gymnastic club of young men, for instance, where I have had opportunity to take the statistics, it is found that less than one-quarter use it, though there has never been any agitation or discussion of the matter.  These things indicate that it can no longer be claimed, as Moliere asserted two centuries ago, that he who lives without tobacco is not worthy to live.

And as there has been some exaggeration in describing the extent to which Tobacco is King, so there has doubtless been some overstatement as to the cruelty of his despotism.  Enough, however, remains to condemn him.  The present writer, at least, has the firmest conviction, from personal observation and experience, that the imagined benefits of tobacco-using (which have never, perhaps, been better stated than in an essay which appeared in this magazine, in August, 1860) are ordinarily an illusion, and its evils a far more solid reality,—­that it stimulates only to enervate, soothes only to depress,—­that it neither permanently calms the nerves nor softens the temper nor enlightens the brain, but that in the end its tendencies are precisely the opposites of these, beside the undoubted incidental objections of costliness and uncleanness.  When men can find