A manly habit / by Professor Kirk.

  • Kirk, Prof.
Date:
[Between 1880 and 1889?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manly habit / by Professor Kirk. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ' A MANLY HABIT. By Rev. PROFESSOR KIRK. (Reprintedfrom “ Narcotism.”) , , 8 true’ ®aid a tender hearted friend to ns the other dav, “ that . CC0 Pute awa7 the Pangs of hunger, and so enables the starving poor to endure their privations much more easily than they otherwise would ? ” hifhoi a ^ “ Spirit> “ d06S {t not warra the P°or Tinian on his bo., when without a smoke he would be very miserable indeed ? ” “ And again, said a third benevolent advocate of “comforts ” for the needy, “ how eou d: a sailor get on without his plug of tobacco ? Only think how cruel it would be to deny such men their last scrap of indulgence? Then the soldiers in time of war-did you not read in the correspondence of the Times and Daily News during the late campaigns on the Continent what a godsend tobacco was to poor shivering wretches in the winter bivouac when a supply o it reached the camp ? Aye, and was not your heart touched when the brave correspondents in their strongest colours pictured themselves as finding consolation in the ‘fragrant weed,’ when all else was depressing their used-up energies ?” ^ h It does seem dreadful indifference to the necessities of our fellow- creatures to try to be proof against these and kindred appeals on behalf of the multitudes who smoke! “Go into the hospitals for the wounded and dying, and only see for yourselves how the poor fellows have their Pangs assuaged by the pipe, and then say whether you can )om in the hue and cry of the anti-smokers, who would sweep all this comfort away i - It is perhaps wicked-very wicked of us ; but like other wicked peopie we cannot, without grent effort, help some very queer thoughts coming up in the face of these appeals on behalf of men who are so dependent on tobacco!_ Here is one such thought-women don’t smoke. H you have seen them in some parts where they do, you will have noticed that it is only the toughest of their kind after all who take to the pipe, rhe true representative of the gentler sex never does so. It is only the woman who comes nearest being like a man who shows the slightest tendency m this direction. The fact provokes most “wicked” questions on our part ere we nsten to these appeals. Is it really the case that women are made of better stuff than men? It would seem so. At least