cigar is their dependence for digestion!  That, after having impaired the organ, or weakened its tone, or dried up the salival menstruum, they should need a stimulant, even in the very form of the bane which injures them, is only of a piece with all that has been said of drinking, and especially of dram-drinking, with which latter debauch, the debauch of cigar-smoking has the closest possible alliance.  We never pass one of those stifling rendezvous in the metropolis—­a cigar-shop, open till the latest hours—­without mentally classing it with the gin-shops, its only compeers!

Exclusive of the low habit of imitation, a dulness and feebleness of understanding, an absence of intellectual resources, a vacuity of thought is the great inducement to the use of this, as of all other drugs, whether from the cigar-shop, or the snuff-shop, or the gin-shop, or the wine-cellar; a truth by no means the less certain, because it happens that men of the highest powers of mind are drawn into the vice, and made to reduce themselves, by their adoption and dependence upon it, to the lowest level of the vulgar; but, at the same time, it is not to be denied, that a great support in defence of cigar-smoking is found in the medical opinions sometimes advanced as to its salutary influence.  Now, if we admit, broadly and at once, that there may be times and circumstances in which the inhaling the hot smoke of a powerful narcotic drug is useful to the human body, must it follow that the habitual resort to such a practice, and this under all circumstances, is useful also, and even free from the most serious inconveniences?

It is the admitted maxim, that if smoking is accompanied by spitting, injury results to the smoker; and the reason assigned is, that the salival fluid, which should assist digestion, is in this manner dissipated, and taken from its office.  But may not the habitual application of the narcotic influence to the nervous system have its evils also?  May it not weaken or deaden the nervous and muscular action which is needful to digestion?  And may not even the excessive quantity of the matter of heat, thus artificially conveyed into the body, tend to a desiccation of the system, as injurious under general circumstances, as it may be beneficial under particular ones?

Smoking invites thirst; and there is little risk in advancing, that whatever superinduces an unnatural indulgence in the use of liquids is itself, and without farther question, injurious, even if the liquids resorted to are of the most innocent description; but, in point of fact, the cigar-smoker will usually appease his thirst by means of liquors in themselves his enemies!