Horsemen before me know some colts have blind teeth and to save the eyes these must be removed.  I staggered to the colt, held the halter rein and when the tooth was removed my uncle, looking at me, said:  “What’s the matter with you?  You are pale as death.”

“Nothing, only it always did make me sick to see a blind tooth knocked out of a horse’s mouth,” I replied.

My uncle said:  “You better lie down on the grass until it passes off,” and I did.

But I kept on after that until I learned to smoke like a man.  When years had passed and I became editor of a paper it seemed to me I could write better editorials with the smoke curling about my face.

One morning I finished my breakfast before Mrs. Bain had half finished hers.  Lighting my cigar I stood by the fire chatting and smoking until the stub was all that remained.  Then, as was my custom, I walked up to kiss her good-bye when she said:  “Good-bye.  But, I would like to ask you a question.  How would you like to have me finish my breakfast before you are half through yours, light a cigar, smoke it to the stub, and with tobacco on my lips and breath offer to kiss you good morning?”

I said:  “You don’t have to kiss me,” and with this I left for my work.  On the way her question seemed to be waiting my answer, and I gave it in a resolve that she should never again have cause to repeat that question, and with my resolve went the cigar.

About this time a co-worker joined me in the same resolution, which helped me to keep mine.  After tea that evening Mrs. Bain said:  “I did not know you were so sensitive, or I should not have said what I did.”  I did not tell her then of my promise, lest I should fail to keep it.  Thirty-five years have passed and not a single cigar have I had between my lips since that morning.

Boys, take one five-cent cigar after each meal, add up the nickels for one year, put the money at interest, next year, and every year do the same, compounding the interest, and in thirty-five years you will have thirty-five hundred dollars—­the price of a home for your old age.

I do not hope to convert old smokers, but if I can persuade one young man in this audience to throw away the cigarette, never to smoke one again, then I will have honored this hour’s service.

If I could live life over I would take the same total-abstinence pledge I took fifty years ago and have kept inviolate to this day.  I would take it, not only because of its personal benefit to me, but because of what it has led me to do for others.

It is said reformers never expect to see the bread they cast upon the waters; inventors may, but not reformers.  Yet I have lived to see my bread come back “buttered” in my old age.

I have lived to see thousands of men and women to whom I gave the pledge in their youth, wearing it still as a garland about their brows, and their children, by precept and example of parents, keep step with the onward march of the temperance army.