Part 82 (2/2)

Christian ministers and professors, think of it! Young men and boys, think of it!

Yes, the Americans smoke, snuff, and chew one hundred and fifty million dollars in tobacco annually. The Chinamen consume $38,294,200 worth of opium in a year. The Russians stuff and glut over an unmerciful amount of lard and candles in a year; and the Frenchmen disgust the rest of mankind by eating all the frogs they can catch. Then there are the cannibals of the South Seas--they love tender babies to eat, but not an old tobacco-soaked sailor will they masticate.

Tobacco kills lice, bugs, fops, small boys, and other vermin.

Tobacco fees doctors, and fills hospitals.

Tobacco fills insane asylums and jails.

Tobacco fills pauper houses and graveyards.

Tobacco makes drunkards.

Tobacco and rum go hand and hand; they are one, inseparable; they are twins, yea, Siamese twins, the Chang and Eng of all villanies. I never saw a drunkard who did not first use tobacco. Did you?

John H. Hawkins, the father of Was.h.i.+ngtonians, said he never was able to find a drunkard who had not first used tobacco.

TOO LOW A FIGURE.

Since writing the above I have been variously informed that my figures are too low. The national revenue derived from tobacco in the States for the year ending June, 1871, was $31,350,707.

CIGARS.

”According to General Pleasonton, who collected the tax on them, there were 1,332,246,000 cigars used in the United States last year. This one billion three hundred and thirty-two million two hundred and forty-six thousand cigars were undoubtedly retailed at ten cents apiece. So we smoked up in this country, last year, $133,224,600 worth of tobacco.”

This does not include pipe-smoking nor chewing tobacco.

The total amount of the vile weed produced in the world annually is as follows:--

Asia, 309,900,000 pounds.

Europe, 281,844,500 ”

America, 248,280,500 ”

Africa, 24,300,100 ”

Australia, 714,000 ”

----------- Making a total of, 865,039,100 ”

THE MIGHTY ARMY OF INVASION.

It is estimated that there are two hundred millions of tobacco-users in the world. What a splendid regiment of sneezers, spewers, smokers, and spitters they would make! They would form a phalanx of five deep, reaching entirely around the world.

Wouldn't they look gay? Forty millions, with filthy old tobacco pipes stuck in their mouths, ”smoking away 'like devils!'” Eighty millions, with best Havana cigars, made in Connecticut and New York, from cabbage leaf, waste stumps of cigars, and ”old soldiers,” thrown away by Irish, Dutch, Italians, French, and Chinese, out of cancerous mouths, whiskey mouths, syphilitic and ulcerous mouths, rotten-toothed mouths--splendid!--protruding from between their sweet lips! Forty millions with pigtail and fine cut, sweet ”honey dew,” made as above, scented, grinding away in their forty million human mills! Forty millions, including five millions in petticoats, holding cartridge boxes (of snuff) in their delicate hands, from which they distribute death-dealing ammunition to--their lovely noses!

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