I stand here to-day in the presence of a vast multitude of young people who are forming their habits.  Between seventeen and twenty-five years of age a great many young men get on them habits in the use of tobacco that they never get over.  Let me say to all my young friends, you can not afford to smoke, you can not afford to chew.  You either take very good tobacco, or you take very cheap tobacco.  If it is cheap, I will tell you why it is cheap.  It is made of burdock, and lampblack, and sawdust, and colt’s-foot, and plantain leaves, and fuller’s earth, and salt, and alum, and lime, and a little tobacco, and you can not afford to put such a mess as that in your mouth.  But if you use expensive tobacco, do you not think it would be better for you to take that amount of money which you are now expending for this herb, and which you will expend during the course of your life if you keep the habit up, and with it buy a splendid farm and make the afternoon and the evening of your life comfortable?

There are young men whose life is going out inch by inch from cigarettes.  Now, do you not think it would be well for you to listen to the testimony of a merchant of New York, who said this:  “In early life I smoked six cigars a day at six and a half cents each.  They averaged that.  I thought to myself one day, I’ll just put aside all I consume in cigars and all I would consume if I keep on in the habit, and I’ll see what it will come to by compound interest.”  And he gives this tremendous statistic:  “Last July completed thirty-nine years since, by the grace of God, I was emancipated from the filthy habit, and the saving amounted to the enormous sum of $29,102.03 by compound interest.  We lived in the city, but the children, who had learned something of the enjoyment of country life from their annual visits to their grandparents, longed for a home among the green fields.  I found a very pleasant place in the country for sale.  The cigar money came into requisition, and I found it amounted to a sufficient sum to purchase the place, and it is mine.  Now, boys, you take your choice.  Smoking without a home, or a home without smoking.”  This is common sense as well as religion.

I must say a word to my friends who smoke the best tobacco, and who could stop at any time.  What is your Christian influence in this respect?  What is your influence upon young men?  Do you not think it would be better for you to exercise a little self-denial!  People wondered why George Briggs, Governor of Massachusetts, wore a cravat but no collar.  “Oh,” they said, “it is an absurd eccentricity.”  This was the history of the cravat without any collar:  For many years before he had been talking with an inebriate, trying to persuade him to give up the habit of drinking and he said to the inebriate, “Your habit is entirely unnecessary.”  “Ah!” replied the inebriate, “we do a great many things that are not necessary.  It isn’t necessary that you should have that collar.”  “Well,”