This young fellow, I thought,
favours his mother in features, but mentally he is perhaps
more like his father.
Being a smoker myself I ventured to put
in a word for him. They were distressing themselves too much,
I told her; smoking in moderation was not only harmless,
especially to those who worked out of doors, but it was a
well-nigh universal habit, and many leading men in the
religious world, both churchmen and dissenters, were known to
be smokers.
Her answer, which came quickly enough, was that they did not
regard the practice of smoking as in itself bad, but they knew
that in some circumstances it was inexpedient; and in the case
of her son they were troubled at the thought of what smoking
would ultimately lead to. People, she continued, did not care
to smoke, any more than they did to eat and drink, in
solitude. It was a social habit, and it was inevitable that
her boy should look for others to keep him company in smoking.
There would be no harm in that in the summer-time when young
people like to keep out of doors until bedtime; but during the
long winter evenings he would have to look for his companions
in the parlour of the public-house. And it would not be easy,
scarcely possible, to sit long among the others without
drinking a little beer. It is really no more wrong to drink
a little beer than to smoke, he would say; and it would be
true.
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