DICK HARRIS; OR, THE BOY-MAN

Dick Harris was called a clever boy, and no one believed this more firmly than he.  He was only fourteen years of age, and yet he dearly loved to be thought a man.

As he was about to leave school, his friends often asked him what he intended to be.  Dick could not tell; only, that it must be something great.  Now while Dick had learned some good thing in school, he had also learned many evil habits—­among them the practice of smoking.

Dick’s father smoked.  He saw men smoking in the streets, and so he thought it would be manly to smoke.  Along with some of his schoolmates, he used to hide himself and take his turn of the one pipe or cigar which they had among them.  As they were afraid of being found out, they hid the pipe when any one came near.

His father, who although he smoked himself, forbade Dick doing so, asked him one day why his clothes smelled so of tobacco smoke.

“Some of my schoolmates smoke, father.”

“But do you smoke?”

“No.”

“Take care you don’t then; it’s all very well for men, but I won’t have any of my children smoking.”

Dick went away, as the Bible says, “with a lie in his right hand.”

And yet he wanted to be a man.  Now look at that, my lads.  What is it that makes a man—­I mean a true man?  There are many things.  The Bible says that the glory of young men is their strength—­strength of body, and strength of mind.

Would Dick get this kind of glory by smoking?  He certainly would not strengthen his body, for it has been proved again and again that boys who smoke weaken their bodies.

Tobacco is a poison—­slower perhaps than strong drink, but quite as sure; and although it may not kill you outright, because the quantity taken is not large enough, yet it pollutes the blood, injures the brain and stomach, and paralyzes many of the healthy functions of the body.

The result is stunted growth and general weakness.  A boy who smokes much never can have the glory of bodily strength.

Dick found this out for himself, to his bitter regret.  And besides this, do you think that his conduct showed strength of mind?  He began the practice of smoking, not because he believed it to be right, but because men smoked.  He was only a boy, yet he wished to appear a man—­that is, to appear what he was not.

What could be more weak than for a boy to have no reason for doing a thing than that men do it? But it led to something worse.  He was smoking on the sly, and to conceal it he became a liar.  He lied in the school by his conduct, he lied at home by his words.

We could have respected him, although we pitied him, had he smoked openly and taken the consequences; but who can respect a coward?  He is not worthy of the name of man.  Dick continued to smoke after he left school, and was apprenticed in a large warehouse.