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The Little Black Master; 
 
 OR, 
 
 TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 
 
 BY 
 
 f 
 
 ERNEST F. WEBB. 
 
 A pure mind in a clean body is the mother of wisdom. 
 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
 1891 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1891, by 
 
 ERNEST F. WEBB, 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 Typography and Presswork hy J. W. Hamilton. 102 High St. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Notes upon the origin of tobacco and alcohol. 
 Notes upon the history of tobacco and alcohol. 
 Also describing the evil effects of these poisons 
 upon the system, warning young people against 
 their use, and endeavoring to do so, have collected 
 notes of great men's knowledge on the subject, 
 notes and experiences of doctors, chemists, pro- 
 fessors of colleges and medical academies, both in 
 Europe and America. Our libraries and book- 
 stores are filled w T ith books for the benefit and 
 pleasure of humanity, many warning young people 
 against the use of narcotics, and describing the ill 
 effects of their use. I ask a small corner for this 
 little book, which tries to describe a deep, swift 
 stream by which half of the young people are 
 being borne away into darkness. It also points 
 out a path along which boys and youths may march 
 away from danger. 
 
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 
 TO THE 
 
 BOYS AND YOUTHS OF AMERICA, 
 
 WITH THE HOPE 
 
 THAT IT MAY CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING 
 
 TO THEIR HAPPINESS AND WELFARE. * 
 
 With sincere 1'egards, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction, yii 
 
 Opening Remarks, 9 
 
 Origin and History of Tobacco, 11 
 
 Description of the Plant and its Properties, .... 11 
 
 Examples of Boy and Girl, 19 
 
 Cigarettes, 21 
 
 How Tobacco leads to Drink and Crime, 22 
 
 Tendency of the Habit to Increase and to be Trans- 
 mitted, - . - 25 
 
 Legislation against it, 26 
 
 Tobacco and Self-interest, 27 
 
 Its Effect on School Work, 29 
 
 The Schoolmaster's Address, 31 
 
 P. T. Barnum's Address, 33 
 
 A Little Boy's Recitation, 35 
 
 A Schoolboy's Remarks, 36 
 
 How Tobacco affected Thirty-eight Boys, .... 39 
 
 How Tobacco affected the Maoris, ........ 39 
 
 How Tobacco weakens Body and Mind, and checks 
 
 Growth, 40 
 
 Physiological Action of Tobacco, 40 
 
 Testimony of Physicians and Noted Men against it, . 42 
 
 Dr. Talmage's Advice, 44 
 
 What John Quincy Adams says, 45 
 
 What the Educators and what the Newspapers say, . 45 
 
 Conclusion to be drawn, 47 
 
 Insurance Agent's Dream, 52 
 
 Stories, 61 
 
 How to leave off Tobacco, 69 
 
 Alcohol. 
 
 How Alcohol was discovered, . 71 
 
 Alcoholic Appetite, 71 
 
 Strong Drink, 72 
 
VI . CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Rich Rumseller, 74 
 
 Delirium Tremens, 76 
 
 Sailor and Soldier, 77 
 
 What Two Little Girls did, 85 
 
 Story of the Engineer, 97 
 
 Not Poverty, but Beer, 103 
 
 Concluding Poem, no 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 The Author, 
 
 The Ship, 14 
 
 George Washington, .• . . . 15 
 
 Indian, 18 
 
 Sick Boy, 19 
 
 Justice, 26 
 
 Schoolmaster and Scholars, 30 
 
 P. T. Barnum, 32 
 
 Mother and Boy, . . . . . 35 
 
 Small Boy, . . 36 
 
 A Contrast, 38 
 
 Group, . 48 
 
 The Little Anti-Tobacco Preacher, 50 
 
 Insurance Agent, 52 
 
 Wife Pleading with her Husband, 66 
 
 Rich Rumseller, . ; 74 
 
 Delirium Tremens, 76 
 
 The Sailor, 77 
 
 Soldiers, 78 
 
 Maloy's Saloon, 85 
 
 Engine, 97 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 My object in writing this little book is to make 
 an impression upon the minds of all the boys who 
 read it that will be lasting and full of the right ele- 
 ment. The subject upon which I have written is 
 principally tobacco, a subject upon which I con- 
 sider every boy should be thoroughly posted and 
 aware of its poisonous and injurious effects upon 
 the body and mind, especially upon one who has 
 not arrived at a full growth. I have quoted testi- 
 monials and statements in this book which I be- 
 lieve will be impressive and effective with boys who 
 read them. 
 
 I have written some short stories and anecdotes 
 which will be interesting, as well as instructive, to 
 all who read them. 
 
 I have also taken pains to select evidence against 
 tobacco which I believe to be in every respect true 
 and reliable, and I have guarded against making 
 any statements which are not facts, and all are 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 substantiated by the most reliable authority both 
 in America and Europe. 
 
 I have not, however, confined the contents of 
 my book exclusively to tobacco, but have written a 
 few pages on the subject of strong drink and its 
 effects. I consider liquor a very near relative of 
 tobacco ; the former, of course, much worse, espe- 
 cially if carried to excess. Cigarette smoking is 
 very popular among boys of all ages, and it is 
 claimed by good authority to be more injurious 
 than cigars or any other form of tobacco. 
 
 I am indebted to some of the publications of 
 H. L. Hastings, of Boston, for a few of the most 
 effective stories in the book. 
 
The Little Black Master; 
 
 OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 
 
 My Dear Youi>§ Reader • 
 
 ) LEASE give me 
 your attention 
 for a while. I want you to 
 feel that I am interested in 
 your welfare, and if I fail to 
 interest you, I shall give you 
 some advice which you will ap- 
 preciate more when you are older than 
 you will now. But I am confident 
 there are many small boys, as well as 
 large ones, who do appreciate good 
 advice, and who are wise and sensible 
 enough to profit by it. You know you 
 want good health so ycu can go to school, play, 
 
IO THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 and attend to other duties which you may have to 
 perform. Perhaps you sell papers or black boots 
 to help buy your clothes, or perhaps your father i3 
 well off, so you are not obliged to do such work. 
 You may be clerk in some large store down 
 town, or errand boy in a large bank. You 
 may be studying with the aspiration of becom- 
 ing a doctor, lawyer, or clergyman, or perhaps 
 governor. As for that, it makes little difference 
 what your work is, so long as it is honorable and 
 respectable. Whatever work you do, you want to 
 feel well, look well, and respect yourself ; but if you 
 smoke cigarettes, or use tobacco in any form, you 
 cannot be well, look well, nor respect yourself as 
 much as you should. You cannot be well, as 
 tobacco causes parts of your body to become dis- 
 eased as soon as you commence using it, although 
 you may not be aware of the fact. You cannot 
 look well, because no young man or boy looks well 
 with a cigar or pipe in his mouth. If you doubt 
 my word, place either in your mouth and look in 
 the glass. I have done the same thing myself, and 
 was thoroughly convinced that it did not improve 
 my appearance, but rather disfigured it. You can- 
 not respect yourself as much as you should, as the 
 action of the nicotine on the nervous system, of 
 which the brain is the centre, will not allow you to 
 do so. It might not make you sick in bed at first, 
 but might cause your death if persisted in. Before 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. II 
 
 we go any further let us read something of its 
 
 ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 
 
 Webster defines tobacco as a plant, a native of 
 America, the prepared leaves of which are much 
 used for smoking and chewing, and in snuff. The 
 name he derives from tabaco, the Indian name for 
 the tobacco tubes or pipes, though others have 
 derived it from Tabaco, a province in Yucatan, or 
 Tobago, one of the Caribbees. Tobacco was first 
 taken into Spain from St. Domingo by Hernandez 
 de Toledo in 1559. By him some of the plants were 
 presented to Jean Nicot. ambassador from Francis 
 II. to the court of Portugal. Nicot presented 
 some of the seeds and plants to Queen Catharine 
 de Medicis, who gave it the name of herbe de la 
 reine, or queen's herb. With scientific men, how- 
 ever, it has ever retained the name of nicotiana, 
 from the name of the ambassador himself. Whether 
 Europeans would have invented the practice of 
 smoking tobacco, if they had discovered it in its 
 natural state, is a question, but they soon learned 
 to imitate the Indian habit. As to its early use in 
 any land, we have the following anecdote of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh. This knight was a great favorite 
 of Queen Elizabeth, and by her permission took 
 possession of several large tracts of land in Amer- 
 ica. He gave the name of Virginia to one part of 
 this land, in honor of the Virgin Queen ; but 
 whether at this time he saw the natives smoking 
 
1 2 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ' 
 
 tobacco in clay pipes and imported the habit to 
 England, or whether one Ralph Lane, who returned 
 with Sir Francis Drake, introduced it to English- 
 men, there has been a great deal of controversy 
 among literary men ; but it is admitted that if Sir 
 Walter Raleigh was not the introducer of tobacco 
 into England, he was certainly one of its greatest 
 patrons and a most inveterate smoker. There is 
 in the town of Islington, in North England, a pub- 
 lic house called the Pied Bull, in which this noted 
 knight once lived. Here the story is told that 
 while he was quietly smoking in his room, a servant, 
 entering, saw his master surrounded with clouds of 
 smoke. Ignorant of the cause and terribly alarmed 
 at seeing, as he supposed, the gentleman on fire, 
 he rushed from the room, and soon returned with 
 buckets of water, with which he completely drenched 
 the distinguished smoker. 
 
 This smoking soon spread over the entire Eastern 
 Hemisphere, but, in spite of the general popularity, 
 the habit met with bitter opposition from many in 
 high authority. At Moscow a tribunal was instituted 
 in 1634, called the Chamber of Tobacco, which pro- 
 hibited the use of the herb, on penalty of the knout 
 for the first offence, and death for the second. In 
 Turkey, the despot Murat IV. ordered persons 
 found smoking to be led through the streets of 
 Constantinople with a pipe stuck through their nose 
 or the first offence ; the second was punished by 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 1 3 
 
 beheading. At Appenzil, in Switzerland, in 1653, 
 smokers were summoned before council and pun- 
 ished by fine or imprisonment. In England, James 
 I. imposed a duty of seven shillings ($1.75) per 
 pound on tobacco, in hopes that this would check 
 its importation. King James did more. He issued 
 a pamphlet of his own writing, entitled " Counter- 
 blast to Tobacco," from which is extracted the 
 following : " Tobacco is the lively image and pat- 
 tern of Hell, for it hath allusion in it to all the vices 
 of the world whereby Hell may be gained. First, 
 it is a smoke ; so are all the vanities of the world. 
 Secondly, it delighteth them who take it ; so do all 
 the pleasures of the world. Thirdly, it maketh 
 men drunken and light in the head ; so do all the 
 vanities of the world. Fourthly, he that taketh to 
 tobacco cannot leave it. It doth bewitch him. 
 Even so the pleasures of the world make men loth 
 to leave them, for they are, for the most part, en- 
 chanted with them. It is a custom loathsome to 
 the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, 
 dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking 
 fumes thereof most resembling the horrible smoke 
 of the bottomless pit.'- Thus wrote King James. 
 
14 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER: 
 
 In 162 1 a ship anchored on the American shore, 
 which had on board sixty girls. Those girls were 
 sold for something over a hundred pounds of to- 
 bacco each ; so, you see tobacco was the price of 
 our first slaves, and those slaves were young, inno- 
 cent girls. To-day men become slaves to that 
 same tobacco, and find the master such a tyrant it 
 is difficult to break the chains and be free. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 
 
 *5 
 
 George Washington, the father of our country 
 and the man who never told a lie, was also a hater 
 of tobacco, and though brought up where it was 
 raised and almost universally used, he never smoked 
 or chewed. He was also a temperance man, and 
 his name was given to the national movement for 
 total abstinence in this country. 
 
 George was born on the 2 2d of February, 1732, 
 in the county of Westmoreland in the parish of 
 Washington (so called from the family whose seat 
 it had been for three generations). The house 
 
1 6 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ) 
 
 in which he was born was destroyed before the 
 American Revolution. Among his manuscripts still 
 in existence there is one, written under thirteen 
 years of age, which deserves to be mentioned. It 
 is entitled " Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior 
 in Company and Conversation. " These rules are 
 written out in the form of maxims to the number of 
 one hundred and ten. "They form," says a writer 
 who has some specimens of them, " a minute code 
 of regulations for building up the habits of morals 
 and manners and good conduct in young persons. " 
 Whether they were taken in a body from some 
 manual of education, or compiled by Washington 
 himself from various books or from his own youth- 
 ful observation and reflection, is unknown. The first 
 is perhaps the more probable supposition. Some 
 of these rules, which formed a part of .his youthful 
 manners and morals, had their influence over 
 Washington, and gave a complexion to his habits 
 through life. 
 
 When the Puritans came to Boston in 1630, it 
 was under the following instructions : " We espe- 
 cially desire to take care that no tobacco is planted 
 by any of the planters under your government, 
 unless it be some small quantity for mere necessity 
 and for physic, and that the same be taken pri- 
 vately by ancient men and none others, and to 
 make a general restraint thereof as much as in you 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. I^ 
 
 The Tobacco Plant 
 
 reaches a height of several feet, and has large, 
 spreading pale green leaves, which when full grown 
 are gathered into sheds or dry-houses, stripped and 
 sorted for the manufacture of cigars and plug 
 tobacco, against the use of which I am endeavor- 
 ing to warn you by writing in this little book cold 
 facts and solid truths that cannot be denied by any 
 intelligent person who is posted. 
 
 A chemical examination of the tobacco leaf finds 
 its surface dotted with small glands which contain 
 the poisonous oil, nicotine. This is absorbed into 
 the system by chewing and smoking. This oil is 
 decided by our most noted chemists to be one of 
 the subtlest poisons known, and is equal in strength 
 to the strongest prussic acid. W. A. Axon asserts, 
 in the Popular Science Monthly, that the nicotine 
 in one cigar, if extracted and taken in a pure state, 
 would kill two men. 
 
1 8 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 The Indians Used to Poison 
 
 their arrows, we are told, by dipping them into 
 nicotine, convulsions, and often death, being the re- 
 sult of these arrow wounds. It is said that Brodie, 
 Queen Victoria's physician, made several experi- 
 ments with nicotine, applying it to the tongues of 
 a mouse, a squirrel, and a dog, death being pro- 
 duced in every instance. A frog, placed in a re- 
 ceiver containing a drop of nicotine in a little 
 water, will die in a few hours. Put on a cat's 
 tongue one drop of nicotine, and, in spite of its 
 seven lives, it writhes in convulsions and dies. One 
 has to learn to like tobacco. Boys who try it 
 know that at first it gives them headache, dizzi- 
 ness, and sickness at the stomach; their poor 
 bodies try to tell them they are taking a rank 
 poison. If they continue, the nicotine deadens 
 their nerves so they do not feel the poisonous 
 effects as at first, though they are more or less in- 
 jured all the time. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 
 
 J 9 
 
 For an Example 
 let suppose an experiment. Take a boy ten years 
 old, one who has never used tobacco. Allow him 
 
 to take a piece of tobacco as large as a pea, chew 
 it, not swallowing a drop, spitting every drop into 
 a spittoon, but keep on chewing, not stop, but 
 chew steadily. Before that £oy has done with that 
 piece of tobacco as large as a pea, simply squeez- 
 ing out the juice without swallowing a drop, he will 
 lie on the floor in a cold, deathlike perspiration. 
 He vomits the contents of his stomach. Place 
 your finger upon his wrist ; he has no pulse, and so 
 it will seem for a long time as if he were dying, or, 
 perchance, dead. Steep a small piece of tobacco 
 in a quart of water, and bathe the neck of a calf 
 that may be troubled with vermin. You will kill 
 the vermin, and if you are not careful, you will kill 
 
20 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 
 
 the calf too. Many calves have been killed by 
 tobacco. Some of these calves had less than four 
 legs. 
 
 For Another Example, 
 
 take a girl sixteen years of age, one with refined 
 habits and gentle manners. Allow that she was to 
 acquire the habit of using tobacco, smoking ciga- 
 rettes, cigars, and going about with a chew of 
 tobacco in her mouth. Now, boys, be candid. 
 What effect do you think this habit would have on 
 this young lady ? Do you think she would retain 
 those refined habits and gentle manners? I think 
 you will all agree with me that she would not. 
 Now, can you tell me why this same habit would 
 not have the same effect on the manners and habits 
 of boys and young men ? Saying nothing of the 
 damage it does otherwise, I think you cannot, for 
 there is no reason why it would not. Now, what 
 young man could ever think of choosing a young 
 lady with such a habit as we have just mentioned 
 with the intention of making her his wife, to be 
 the mother of his offspring? I feel quite sure 
 there is not one. Now, on the other hand, what 
 refined young lady, providing she was aware of the 
 injury and effects of the tobacco habit, would care 
 to have for a lover a young man whose clothes and 
 breath smell of the poison drug? If the truth 
 were known, there would not be one. It is only 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 2 1 
 
 because the fashion and habit are fixed upon men 
 that makes it seem absurd and worse for women 
 to acquire the habit. 
 
 Cigarettes. 
 
 Many boys and young men learn to smoke by 
 beginning with cigarettes. These seem harmless, 
 because they are so small, but they are supposed 
 to be one of the worst preparations of tobacco. 
 The smoke of the paper wrappings is irritating to 
 the lungs, and the cigarettes send more poisonous 
 fumes into the delicate air-cells than a pipe or 
 cigar. Dr. Hammond bears witness to the ill 
 effects of cigarettes in the production of facial 
 neuralgia, insomnia, nervous dyspepsia, sciatica, 
 and indisposition to mental exertion. In a city 
 school a young lad of thirteen became dull and fit- 
 ful and troubled with nervous twitching. His con- 
 dition at length compelled him to be withdrawn 
 from his studies. He was found to be a smoker of 
 cigarettes. When asked why he did not give them 
 up, he replied with tears that he had often tried to 
 do so, but could not. The following is from a 
 public schqpl journal : " Park H. Adams, aged 
 fourteen, a student in the University of Tennessee, 
 is dying. He smoked forty cigarettes on a wager, 
 and inhaled the smoke." A young man showed 
 some symptoms of heart disease. The pulse at 
 times almost ceased, and at another time he seemed 
 
2 2 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 on the point of dying. On consulting a physician, 
 he was informed that all these symptoms came from 
 smoking cigarettes, and on quitting them his health 
 was soon regained. 
 
 Now, boys who are smoking cigarettes, do you 
 know the fascinating as well as dangerous habit 
 upon you will grow ? 
 
 The Deadly Cigarette. 
 
 The following despatches to the daily papers of 
 a single date tell their own story : 
 
 Carlisle, Pa., Feb. n. — Edward D. Crall, busi- 
 ness manager of the Morning Call at Harrisburg, 
 died last evening at his father's house, South Pitts 
 St., of blood poisoning, caused by excessive smok- 
 ing of cigarettes. He was in his twenty-third 
 year. 
 
 Middletown, N. Y., Feb. n. — Johnnie Powers, 
 eleven years old, was taken to the County Asylum 
 at Orange Farm to-day, a raving maniac, from the 
 effects of cigarette smoking. Symptoms of mania 
 first developed Saturday, and were of a spasmodic 
 nature. Soon the boy became very violent, strik- 
 ing at people, tearing his clothes, and- trying to in- 
 jure himself. The doctors think the case hopeless. 
 
 Rev. C. M. Southgate, in "A Plain Talk with 
 Boys," says : " Tobacco is murdering many a lad. 
 Where they do not fairly kill, cigarettes are the 
 devil's kindling wood. They start a craving for 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL, 23 
 
 stimulants that liquor is quickest to meet. And 
 why is it that ' fancy ' pictures go with them as 
 prizes, unless licentiousness comes next ? But can't 
 a man smoke and be good, be a Christian? I sup- 
 pose so. But by the time tobacco has killed a few 
 more generals like Grant, and a few more emper- 
 ors like Frederick the Noble, and a few more busi- 
 ness men and bright boys, a smart boy may get it 
 through his head that it doesn't pay. And not till 
 the smart boys quit will the poor and dull let it 
 alone. The highest style of man does not smoke, 
 will not submit to its slavery, nor be responsible 
 for its example." 
 
 Dr. B. W. Richardson has reported a case of a 
 literary man who practically died of acute nicotine 
 poisoning, resulting from smoking forty cigarettes 
 and fourteen cigars in less than twelve hours. He 
 died of muscular paralysis, with cold sweat, uncon- 
 sciousness, and embarrassed breathing. Such cases 
 are far less common than deaths by excessive, re- 
 peated liquor drinking. But such deaths, whether 
 from alcohol or tobacco, prove that these poisons 
 are far more dangerous than is commonly sup- 
 posed. 
 
 I would say much more and produce much more 
 valuable testimony against the use of cigarettes, 
 but think what has already been said is enough to 
 convince any sound-minded person, whether old 
 or young, that cigarette smoking is a very unde- 
 
24 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 
 
 sirable pastime, taking into consideration the ill 
 effects that many times follow their use. 
 
 Drinking Men are almost always Smokers 
 
 or chewers, and many a drunkard owes his ruined 
 life and happiness to the appetite for narcotics, 
 formed by the use of tobacco, and the company 
 into which it led him. In Auburn, N.Y., a few 
 years ago there were six hundred young men con- 
 fined for crimes committed when they were under 
 the influence of liquor. Five hundred testified 
 they began their intemperance by the use of to- 
 bacco. It is said that liquor is used in the manufac- 
 ture of tobacco. If this is so, which I have no 
 cause to doubt, it stands to reason that by using 
 tobacco it creates a desire for strong drink. 
 
 Physicians agree that many and serious troubles 
 result from its use even by adults. It is certain 
 that boys cannot indulge in it with safety. An 
 eminent physician, dean of one of the leading 
 medical colleges in this country, Dr. H. B. Palmer, 
 of the University of Michigan, says that young men 
 who learn to chew or smoke tobacco destroy, on an 
 average, by so doing, one fifth of the enjoyment and 
 value, and at least one tenth of the length of their 
 lives. As in the case of alcohol, a little makes them 
 long for more. The boy who begins with one or 
 two cigars a day soon increases the number. 
 
 Many men who are slaves to this poison would 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 25 
 
 gladly be free from it, and very few tobacco users 
 would advise their- sons to adopt the expensive, 
 uncleanly, and worse than useless habit. 
 
 Beside many evils which its use involves, not the 
 least is one already noted as to alcohol. It not 
 only becomes a habit that is hard to abandon, but 
 the very failure which so many make in their efforts 
 to quit its use shows too plainly that it undermines 
 the power of self-control, and so is a weakening of 
 that vigor of trained will, of that mastery of self 
 which is a part of the physical as well as of the 
 intellectual welfare and power of manhood. 
 
 As an interest both of individual and State the 
 use of tobacco in any form by children should be 
 prohibited under proper penalties. 
 
 As a matter of public and personal health, and in 
 the interests of the vigor of coming generations, 
 this restraint is demanded. 
 
 During the growing period of life all are more 
 susceptible to the evil effects of tobacco. Those 
 of full age are affected in a milder degree. There 
 is always a steady tendency of the habit to increase. 
 Young man, it is not only the injury you are doing 
 to yourself by smoking cigarettes and using to- i 
 bacco in general, but you are preparing to transmit j 
 the injury to your children. The transmission of 
 habits and disease by parents to children is a well- 
 known fact among the wise. 
 
 Now, boys, if you are smoking with the thought 
 
26 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 of its making a gentleman of you, you will get sadly 
 mistaken, I can tell you, as the tendency is quite 
 in the opposite direction. The habit and its effects 
 have changed many a gentleman, as well as gentle 
 boys, from happy and virtuous lives to degraded 
 and ruined ones. 
 
 Even among those who have the belief that the 
 moderate use of tobacco does not injure all per- 
 sons, there is such agreement as to its effects upon 
 the young that most of them favor laws which 
 make it a punishable offence for those under age 
 to use tobacco in any form. 
 
 Extracts from Recent Legislation. 
 
 STATE OF MINNESOTA. 
 
 *' Section i. — That all school officers in the 
 State may introduce, as part of the daily exercises 
 of each school in their jurisdiction, instruction in 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 27 
 
 the elements of moral science, including self- 
 denial, health, purity, temperance, cleanliness." 
 
 STATE OF NEW YORK. 
 
 " Provision shall be made by the proper school 
 authorities for instructing all pupils in all schools 
 supported by public money, or under State control, 
 in physiology and hygiene, with special reference 
 to the effects of alcoholic drinks, stimulants, and 
 narcotics upon the human system/' 
 
 STATE OF MICHIGAN. 
 
 u Section 15. — The district board shall specify 
 the studies to be pursued in the schools of the 
 district ; that provision shall be made for instruct- 
 ing all pupils in every school in physiology and 
 hygiene, with special reference to the effects of 
 alcoholic drinks, stimulants, and narcotics gener- 
 ally upon the human system." 
 
 Tobacco and Self-interest. 
 
 Professor Bascom says : 
 
 " There are few prevalent and accepted habits 
 more at war with a wise self-interest than that of 
 the use of tobacco. 
 
 " The very positive and unwholesome effects of 
 tobacco on the human system are obvious, aside 
 from all medical testimony on the subject, fronv 
 the simple fact that it creates an intense, almost 
 ungovernable appetite, as in the use of opium and 
 
28 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 liquor, and forms a decisive change in the tissues 
 of the body. 
 
 " It is not a normal condition, but a very abnor- 
 mal condition, from which this craving springs. 
 It discloses the unfortunate change which has been 
 wrought in the physical system by tobacco, a 
 change of which every chewer and smoker has a 
 most humiliating witness within himself. He need 
 not go elsewhere to know the very positive power 
 of tobacco. The devils of weakness and disease 
 which possess humanity are legion, and a goodly 
 number find entrance by this appetite. Other 
 better and more enjoyable pleasures are sacrificed 
 to this habit. All pleasures are not open to us. 
 We must choose among them. He who chooses 
 tobacco as his after-dinner indulgence leaves be- 
 hind him the more delicate appreciation of food, 
 and the more varied and wholesome gratification 
 of fruits which belong to a perfectly healthy appe- 
 tite. It is an unsocial habit. In a limited way, in 
 the form of smoking, it is social, but even then it 
 is narrowly elective to those of like habits, and 
 comes in to reduce the mental tone and straiten 
 the circle. 
 
 " The indulgence more or less repels many, and 
 the persons repelled are those of a more refined 
 and inspiring temper. The habit is exclusive and 
 narrow in its social and in its physical relations. 
 
 " A man of good judgment having reached ma- 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 29 
 
 ture years very rarely takes it up. It is fastened 
 on boys and young men in that period of crude- 
 ness and greenness in which they are mistaking 
 the vices of their elders for their virtues, their 
 errors for their excellences. A boy once gotten 
 beyond this unripe age, so succulent of moral 
 malaria, without the habit, finds nothing in it to 
 appeal to his growing judgment and experience." 
 
 The tobacco habit and its effect on school work, 
 as written by a prominent teacher of ten years' ex- 
 perience in one of our State Normal Schools : 
 
 " i. Boys that begin the habit at an early age 
 are stunted physically, and never arrive at full 
 bodily development. 
 
 " 2. Accompanied with the use of the narcotic 
 were certain disordered physical functions, such as 
 indigestion, impaired taste, defective eyesight, dull 
 hearing, nervous affections, and diseases of the 
 heart. I have not found a single case of one early 
 addicted to tobacco using who did not suffer with 
 one or more of these direful, unnatural conditions. 
 
 " 3. Tobacco in any form destroys the ability to 
 apply one's self to study, and prevents his com- 
 prehending or remembering his lessons. The facul- 
 ties of a boy under the influence of tobacco seem 
 to be in a stupor. 
 
 u 4. In one case where reform was secured and 
 the habit overcome, the pupil returned to normal 
 progress, and had a successful career as a student." 
 
30 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 A Schoolmaster Lecturing his Scholars upon the Evils of Tobacco. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 3 1 
 
 A Schoolmaster Lecturing his Scholars upon the 
 Evils of Tobacco. 
 
 " Scholars : I wish to state two things in rela- 
 tion to the bad effect of tobacco on schools. J 
 have taught forty- six years, and I have observed 
 that boys who are in the habit of using tobacco 
 are generally unequal in their lessons. Tobacco 
 exasperates their nerves, and they cannot study 
 with uniformity and composure ; hence their les- 
 sons are not alike good ; and secondly, scholars 
 who use tobacco are more difficult to govern. 
 
 "Tobacco exasperates their tempers, and they 
 cannot keep orderly and still on their seats. Some 
 of the noblest boys I ever had have been ruined 
 by this abominable thing. It injures both scholar- 
 ship and government." 
 
THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER j 
 
 J^ 
 
 
 Phineas Taylor Barnum 
 
 was born at Bethel, Conn., July 5, 18 10. He de- 
 tested tobacco as much as he did strong drink. At 
 the age of nineteen he became editor of the Herald 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 33 
 
 of Freedom, published in Danbury, Conn. He 
 afterwards became the most successful showman 
 ever known. Almost every one has seen Barnum's 
 Greatest Show on Earth. 
 
 Address of P. T. Bamum, Esq., to the Boys. 
 
 " But little need be said to convince boys of the 
 deleterious nature of tobacco. It is a species of 
 poison that cannot be mistaken for any palatable 
 and delicious ingredient. Many boys have doubt- 
 less heard the story of a bear that once chanced 
 to come across a field of tobacco. He only saw 
 the pale flowers, and smelt their nauseous perfume, 
 but he turned up his nose and cantered away. 
 
 "The boy who loves tobacco will, ten chances to 
 one, make a tippler. He cannot indulge a taste so 
 unnatural without being led into other unnatural 
 habits. He only wants the peculiar coat, cravat, 
 gait, and air of a dandy to make him a smoker. 
 He only requires the uncompromising expression 
 of a dandy to make him a commentary upon the 
 use of this nauseous weed, which God designed 
 for the poorest worm in all the wide creation. 
 
 " My boys, do not let the example of the poorest 
 worms of humanity lead you into such temptation. 
 It can never give you satisfaction ; for, the more 
 you smoke, chew, or snuff, the more you will wish 
 to, and, like the poor inebriate, you will at last 
 become an outcast in the fold of Truth. 
 
34 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 "Let me entreat you to be careful how you venture 
 upon the forbidden ground where tobacco finds its 
 growth. You will find it a place of magnetic in- 
 fluence, and, when you would turn to come away, 
 your feet will be stayed. 
 
 "You will find it a place of human misery, where 
 thousands lie, unable to break the shackles that 
 bind them. You will find it a place of human dis- 
 appointment where many leave for death.' ' 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 35 
 
 A Little Boy Speaking a Piece to his Mother about 
 Tobacco. 
 
 You'd scarce expect one of my age 
 
 To slay tobacco on this stage \ 
 
 But should I chance to fall below 
 
 Great men, in hurling wrath upon this foe, 
 
 Don't cast on me malignant eye, 
 
 Nor let your angry passions fly. 
 
 Large streams from little quids do flow, 
 Small chewers into great ones grow ; 
 And though I now am small and young, 
 No quid shall ever touch my tongue. 
 
36 
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 Let all the boys and girls like me, 
 From filthy quids pledge they'll be free ; 
 And then will not Columbia's soil 
 Be rich, without the new found " oil" ? 
 
 
 Now, fellow schoolmates and playmates, you all 
 know I have smoked cigarettes, chewed a little to- 
 bacco when we would all meet on the park in the 
 evening, and once or twice have drunk some beer. 
 Now I hold in this glass, not beer or any kind of 
 liquor that will hinder my growth and spoil my 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 37 
 
 brain ; instead of that, it is pure, cold water, which 
 will quench my thirst and make me healthy ; and, 
 boys, I have adopted it for my life drink. 
 
 As for cigarettes and tobacco, I have given them 
 up forever, and I am feeling like a new boy, and, 
 boys, you had better follow my example, and when 
 we grow up we can make our parents happy, as well 
 as being healthy and happy ourselves. 
 
38 
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 Fig. I. Fig. 2. 
 
 Figure i represents a young man at the age of 
 seventeen, who had never used tobacco or strong 
 
OR,- TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 39 
 
 drink, or indulged in any vice. Figure 2 represents 
 the same one seven years later, after indulging in 
 tobacco, liquor, and vice to excess. 
 
 In an experimental observation of thirty-eight 
 boys of all classes of society, and of average health, 
 who had been using tobacco for periods ranging 
 from two months to two years, twenty- seven showed 
 severe injury to the constitution and insufficient 
 growth ; thirty-two showed irregularity of the heart's 
 action, disordered stomachs, cough, and a craving 
 for alcohol ; thirteen had intermittence of the pulse, 
 and one had consumption. After they had given 
 up the use of tobacco, within six months one half 
 were free from all their former symptoms, and the 
 remainder had recovered by the end of the year. 
 
 When Europeans first visited New Zealand they 
 found in the native Maoris the most finely de- 
 veloped and powerful men of any of the tribes 
 inhabiting the islands of the Pacific. Since the 
 introduction of tobacco, for which the Maoris de- 
 veloped a passionate liking, they have, from this 
 cause alone, it is said, become decimated in num- 
 bers, and at the same time reduced in stature and 
 in physical well-being, so as to be an altogether 
 inferior type of men. 
 
 The following paragraphs are taken from Smith's 
 "Physiology" : 
 
 " It is evident that the effects of tobacco on the 
 young are especially evil. 
 
40 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER j 
 
 " Boys who use it are weakened in their minds 
 and bodies. They are so changing the system from 
 its natural healthy condition, that it is preparing 
 for disease and acquiring tendencies that lead to 
 dissipation and worthlessness. 
 
 " Whatever satisfaction it may give is purchased 
 at the expense of slavery to it. In some occupa- 
 tions it is a serious hindrance to success. The bad 
 v effects of tobacco smoke are increased when it is 
 drawn with the breath into the lungs. More of its 
 poisonous ingredients pass through the air cells and 
 reach the blood. 
 
 " Its effects in checking growth are unmistakable, 
 so far as the young are concerned. It is doing 
 more harm to bodily health than alcohol. A sub- 
 stance that will produce such profound impression 
 as it does when first used, and which has caused 
 death when applied for a long time to a raw sur- 
 face on the body, and which has by its irritation 
 induced cancer, surely ought not to be in ordinary 
 use among mankind.'' 
 
 Physiological Action. 
 
 The physiological effects of tobacco on man 
 have been very minutely observed by Dr. Pierre, 
 and are thus described : 
 
 In small doses tobacco causes a sensation of heat 
 in the throat. In large doses it causes nausea, 
 vomiting, and purging, and a most distressing sen- 
 sation or sinking at the pit of the stomach. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 4 1 
 
 Its most remarkable effects are languor, feeble- 
 ness, relaxation of the muscles, trembling, great 
 anxiety and tendency to faint, vision enfeebled, 
 pulse small and weak, surface cold and clammy, 
 convulsive movements followed by paralysis and 
 death. The law of local affinity, by which any 
 substance taken into the system exerts a special 
 effect upon particular organs, is a well established 
 fact. Thus, white lead fastens upon the muscles of 
 the wrist and produces what is known among white 
 lead manufacturers and painters as wrist drop. 
 
 Mercury affects the salivary glands, and iodine 
 the lymphatics. The local affinity of the oil of 
 tobacco is for the nerves of the heart, weakening 
 the organ and producing palpitation, and rendering 
 it incapable of sending a full supply of arterial 
 blood to the brain, causing giddiness. The con- 
 tinued and excessive use of tobacco is not seldom 
 the chief cause of those organic derangements 
 ending in fatal heart disease. 
 
 Such are the primary effects of tobacco as noted 
 by many intelligent physicians. 
 
 Why, then, it is asked, do many persons use it 
 for years and suffer no injury? That it is some- 
 times used for years without producing the extreme 
 symptoms noted, is true. That it does no harm is 
 far from the truth. That by constant use the sys- 
 tem tolerates a substance that, if carried to excess, 
 in the first instance produces death, is a part of the 
 
42 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 
 
 vital problem that the science of human life pre- 
 sents for our solution. It is true of other sub- 
 stances as well as tobacco. Arsenic, after long 
 use, is eaten in large quantities with seeming im- 
 punity. A quantity of opium which as a first dose 
 would produce stupor and death, would have no 
 marked effect upon a habitual opium-eater. But it 
 may be fairly set down as a certainty that any agent 
 which antagonizes animal life cannot be taken per- 
 sistently, without great functional disturbance, the 
 tendency of which is to weaken and enfeeble the 
 entire organism. 
 
 Mr. Scolley, surgeon of St. Thomas Hospital, in an 
 able lecture on paralysis, says : " I am not going to 
 give you a sermon against smoking, but I am going 
 to point out to you all the various and positive 
 causes of paralysis, and smoking is one of them. I 
 know of no single vice which does so much harm 
 as smoking. It is a snare and a delusion. It 
 soothes the excitement of the nervous system at 
 the time, to render it more irritable and more feeble 
 ultimately." 
 
 Mr. Higginbottom, an eminent surgeon in Not- 
 tingham, England, writes in the London Lancet : 
 " After fifty years of most extensive practice of my 
 profession, I have come to the decision that smok- 
 ing is a main cause of ruining our young men. 
 The proverbial drunkenness of our countrymen 
 can only be arrested by laying the axe at the root 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 43 
 
 of its super- inducing cause, the thirst-creating power 
 of tobacco." 
 
 Dr. J. Pidduck, with extensive opportunities for 
 observation, noted the remarkable fact that leeches 
 were killed instantly by the blood of smokers, and 
 dropped dead as soon as applied. 
 
 The victim of this habit will say these effects 
 follow only the excessive, not the moderate, use of 
 the weed. A sufficient answer to this is found in 
 the well-known fact that the law of narcotics and 
 stimulants is that of increase, and the boundary 
 line between moderation and excess is too shadowy 
 and ill-defined to be observed by the slave of a 
 debasing habit. 
 
 What a blessing to the race if all men shrank 
 from this plague of the brain as did the first Na- 
 poleon. One inhalation was enough. In disgust 
 he exclaimed, " O, the swine ! The stomach turns. 
 It is a habit only fit to amuse sluggards.". 
 
 Abraham Lincoln hated tobacco. General Grant 
 tolerated the cigar. What was the consequence ? 
 It killed him. When people study into matters 
 enough to know what tobacco does to them in the 
 long run, and why they have these uncomfortable 
 feelings when they try to leave off the habit and 
 give nature a chance to clean out their systems, 
 perhaps they will understand the causes of such 
 derangement. 
 
 Dr. Ferguson says : " I believe that no one who 
 
44 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER J 
 
 smokes tobacco before the bodily powers are de- 
 veloped ever makes a vigorous man. It not only 
 injures the body, but the mind also." 
 
 Dr. Prince, for a long time superintendent of 
 the insane asylum at Northampton, Mass., says : 
 " Fully half of the patients who have come to our 
 asylum for treatment are the victims of tobacco. It 
 is also the common stepping-stone to intoxicating 
 beverages." 
 
 Say No ! to tobacco, that poisonous weed, 
 
 Say No ! to this poison which to intemperance will lead. 
 
 Our standard medical works teach us that to- 
 bacco affects first the brain ; second, the heart ; 
 and third, the stomach. 
 
 From the brain the whole nervous system is 
 affected. Through the heart the entire circulation 
 of the blood, and through the stomach the diges- 
 tive and assimilative apparatus are influenced. 
 
 Says Rev. Dr. Talmage : 
 
 " There are multitudes of young men smoking 
 themselves to death. Nervous, cadaverous, nar- 
 row-chested, and fidgety, they are preparing for 
 early departure, or a half-and-half existence that 
 will be of little satisfaction to themselves or little 
 use to others. Quit it, my young brother. Before 
 you go through this life you will want stout nerves, 
 a broad chest, and a brain unclouded with tobacco 
 smoke." 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 45 
 
 In reply to a letter from Dr. Cox, John Quincy 
 Adams writes : 
 
 " In my early youth I was addicted to tobacco 
 in two of its mysteries, smoking and chewing. I 
 was warned by a medical friend of the pernicious 
 operation of this habit upon the stomach and the 
 nerves, and the advice of the physician was fortified 
 by my own experience. More than thirty years 
 have passed away since I deliberately renounced 
 the use of tobacco in all its forms, and, although I 
 had a struggle with vitiated nature, I never yielded. 
 
 11 1 have often wished that every individual 
 afflicted with this artificial passion would prevail on 
 himself to try the experiment which I made, sure 
 that it would turn every acre of tobacco land into 
 a wheat-field, and add five years to the average of 
 human life." 
 
 Professor Oliver, of the Annapolis Academy, says 
 he can discover when a boy uses tobacco by his 
 absolute inability to draw a clean straight line. Dr. 
 Kitchen questions if tobacco is not doing more 
 injury than alcohol, because it is so largely used 
 by youth, it is less frowned down as not respectable, 
 and its effect is more diffused and masked. 
 
 What a Little Weed Did. 
 
 A telegram from West Superior, Wis., Aug. 7; 
 says : " A clerk in the clothing store of Abraham 
 & Co., at West Superior, hid a half-smoked cigar 
 
4^ THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 from one of his employers this evening in a pile of 
 clothing. Loss, $40,000." 
 
 All from a Cigarette. 
 
 IT STARTS A $240,000 BLAZE IN THE NEW YORK 
 Y. M. C. A. GROUNDS. 
 
 New York, Aug. 20. — A discarded cigarette set 
 fire to the grand stand in the athletic grounds of 
 the Y. M. C. A. in One Hundred and Fiftieth St., 
 between Walton Ave. and the Harlem river, late 
 this afternoon, and started a blaze that resulted in 
 $240,000 damage. 
 
 The following is taken from one of the daily 
 papers of July 27, 1891, written from Buzzard's 
 Bay: 
 
 " IS TOBACCO KILLING BOOTH ? 
 
 " There is a well-authenticated report floating 
 about this town that Edwin Booth is dying from 
 the effects of too much smoking. He is such a 
 slave to the weed that he cannot stop smoking, 
 even though he knows it is killing him. Its effect 
 upon his health is just as fatal, though not of the 
 same character as that which shut out the life of 
 General Grant. Joe Jefferson and Ex- President 
 and Mrs. Cleveland have been striving to reform 
 Mr. Booth in this respect, and for a while they 
 partly succeeded, but the habit had too strong a 
 hold upon him, and his indulgences became more 
 unrestrained than ever. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 47 
 
 "It is because of this relapse, and because he 
 knows he can get no better in health, that he has 
 left here suddenly last Saturday. He has gone to 
 Xarragansett Pier." 
 
 Boys, I think you will fully agree with me that 
 it is better not to make a tobacco box of yourself 
 at all. I could produce many more testimonials 
 against the use of tobacco from eminent physicians 
 of long experience, but think the few which I have 
 submitted for your consideration are sufficient to 
 convince any boy of sound mind that he will have 
 nothing to do with tobacco in any form. If older 
 people will not set a good example for you in re- 
 gard to using tobacco, just show them you know 
 the habit is injurious, and that you have manhood 
 enough about you not to become a victim to it, and 
 I am sure you will never be sorry for your decision, 
 but when you become a man you will congratulate 
 yourself that you have abstained from the filthy 
 weed which has such power to lessen every power 
 which nature has given you. 
 
4 8 
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 Don't Drink, my Boys, nor Smoke. 
 Boys, don't drink anything that will make you 
 drunk. If you drink such things when you are 
 boys, you will drink them when you come to be 
 grown, and likely to be a drunkard all your life. 
 We will tell you a story of a boy who got to drink- 
 ing whiskey and smoking when he was quite young. 
 His father kept whiskey in the house. Little John 
 was given toddy, a drink made of whiskey, hot 
 water, sugar, and spices, for his colics when a baby, 
 for his colds and all his aches when he grew older. 
 He became very fond of it, and soon could drink 
 brandy or whiskey like a grown man. By the time 
 he was ten years old he was a hard drinker and 
 hard smoker, and almost all the time drunk. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 49 
 
 One afternoon he was very much intoxicated. 
 He abused his mother, who tried to keep him from 
 going to the river to bathe, and left home cursing 
 her. He went to a cherry orchard with some boys 
 as bad as himself; ate all the cherries he could, 
 and then went to the river with them to bathe. 
 They took a bottle of whiskey, and cigars with 
 them. They were all quite drunk. Johnny was 
 very loud, swearing and blustering. He dared the 
 other boys to swim over the river with him. They 
 made as if they would, but stopped, and he went 
 on and sank in the middle of the stream to rise 
 no more. 
 
 Alarm was given, and for two days the river was 
 searched for his body, but all in vain ; it could not 
 be found. Cannon were fired, the river was raked, 
 and all was done that could be in pity for his 
 broken-hearted mother and father. Still he could 
 not be found, and the search was given up. 
 
 Three months afterward a fisherman found a 
 skeleton in a drift ten miles below the city, which 
 was found to be that of the unfortunate boy. 
 
 This is but one case out of thousands. Boys, 
 never touch liquor — no beer, no wine, no whiskey, 
 no cigars, no tobacco ; they are all one family, and 
 how can you marry one and not the whole ? 
 
50 
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 ^^.^ 
 
 The Little Anti-Tobacco Preacher Spreading 
 
 his Tracts. 
 Dear Boys : Did you ever think that you have 
 a mission to perform as well as older people ? 
 
 Do you see this little fellow talking to these three 
 men that he found working by the roadside ? 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 5 1 
 
 He had saved pennies which his friends had 
 given him to buy what he chose, and with the 
 money he bought some temperance and anti- 
 tobacco tracts, and he finds a great deal of pleas- 
 ure in handing them to men that he sees smoking. 
 He hopes to induce them to leave off their bad 
 habits. He addresses them in a modest, respect- 
 ful way, and see how attentively they listen. You 
 can do much good by your example. If you do 
 right, many a man in the wrong track may be 
 touched by your childish faith, and follow in your 
 little footsteps. I -have often heard of little chil- 
 dren pleading with their fathers to forsake their 
 bad habits, and sometimes the voice of a child is 
 just what is needed to awaken the attention of a 
 parent. Be sure your own example is right, for a 
 lad that has any bad habit cannot consistently urge 
 others to desist from their vices. 
 
 An exemplary, kind little boy will be well re- 
 ceived, even by wicked men, for example has more 
 force than words. 
 
5 2 
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER j 
 
 
 m^^\% 
 
 AN INSURANCE AGENT'S DREAM. 
 
 Musing in my office upon the many ills that 
 afflict society, I fell asleep and dreamed. In my 
 dream I was travelling in a country at a great dis- 
 tance from any human habitation. The road passed 
 along a serpentine valley, with mountains rising to 
 a vast' height on all sides. As the heavens seemed 
 to portend a storm, I looked anxiously around for 
 some place of shelter for the night. Casting my 
 eye to the left, I espied a large opening, and thither 
 I bent my steps. 
 
 Stepping into a winding cavity in the passage, I 
 sat down. Looking through a crevice in the rock, 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 53 
 
 I saw a multitude of strange beings advance and 
 defile right and left. A terrible blast of a trumpet 
 was given, which was answered from within, and then 
 some one exclaimed aloud, "Have the Prince's 
 vicegerents assembled?" "Puissant Prince of the 
 power of the air, your ministers are in waiting," 
 was the reply. A being of gigantic stature then 
 advanced, and after him followed a numerous train. 
 In a few minutes I dared to follow. After pro- 
 ceeding some two or three hundred feet, I came to 
 the pandemonium of their assembly. This was a 
 large hall, having circular seats of rock rising one 
 above the other. On the opposite side, in front, 
 rose a huge black rock — the throne for the chief. 
 From the sides of the cavern there issued a dark, 
 blue flame, which made darkness visible. 
 
 The fumes of brimstone were so strong that I 
 fell upon my face close to the rocky floor, to pre- 
 vent suffocation. 
 
 The superior fiend rose from his seat, resting 
 upon the rock a massy spear, which he held in his 
 right hand. With his tail he lashed his scaly sides, 
 which gave forth a terrific sound, and with fiery 
 eyes he thus began, in tones that shook the cavern : 
 "Thrones! Dominions! Powers! I have assem- 
 bled you for consultation. I must devise some 
 more efficient measures for arresting the progress 
 of temperance. Thousands of my subjects have 
 deserted. Many have so far recovered from the 
 
54 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 effects of intemperance as to be savingly affected 
 by the gospel of my great foe, Jesus Christ. They 
 have joined churches, and are laboring to persuade 
 others to do the same." 
 
 As he said these words, the whole crew grasped 
 their spears, and lashed their scaly sides with their 
 tails. He continued: " Something must be done, 
 or our cause will lose ground. Whether it be best 
 to make more open war upon temperance, or prac- 
 tise with greater vigilance our secret wiles, judge 
 ye. For triumphant success I place great reliance 
 
 UPON TOBACCO. 
 
 " We will first hear from King Alcohol, and then 
 I wish especially to hear from his prime minister, 
 my valued friend, tobacco, who stands yonder in 
 smoke." 
 
 King Alcohol arose. His aspect wjs fierce and 
 frightful ; his head large ; his hair clotted ; his eyes 
 were like lightning. His nose was like the pro- 
 boscis of an elephant, and coiled like the worm of 
 a still ; and his bowels seemed transparent with the 
 glowing fires of hell. In musing accent thus he 
 spoke: "Your Majesty will bear witness that no 
 power has done you more service than myself. To 
 deceive and destroy is my business, and yet I have 
 not been able to do your majesty as good service 
 as formerly. Since our last meeting I have failed to 
 invent any new species of alcoholic drink. But I 
 have done better. I have set deacons and Christians 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 55 
 
 to raising and selling tobacco. I have blinded 
 the eyes of temperance folks to the fact that to- 
 bacco and alcohol are twin devils, that united they 
 stand, divided they fall. Some effort is being made 
 to get up an anti-tobacco reform. I give way for 
 the faithful powers of high satanic labor to speak 
 their minds." 
 
 Then brandy rising, with a bluff red cheek, said 
 that he was steadily at his work of ruin, and suc- 
 ceeded well. He ran like liquid fire through the 
 whole system, but made permanent lodgement in 
 the liver, producing tubercles, abscesses and scir- 
 rhus. He advised unwearied labor in inducing men 
 to raise and use tobacco. 
 
 Gin, with a pale and haggard aspect, rising, said, 
 that, taking hold of the fluids of the body, he 
 rapidly carried them off through the kidneys, emaci- 
 ated and destroyed its victims ; that he was steadily 
 at work, and probably had more on the way to 
 destruction than any other agent, unless it was his 
 brother tobacco. Onward, is my advice. 
 
 Whiskey, rising quickly, with a bloated appear- 
 ance, said he hoped not to be outdone by any one 
 in conclave. He scorched the stomach, bleared 
 the eyes, and, burning his victims with inward fire, 
 he was able very soon to bring them into a state of 
 delirium tremens. My advice is, neve?- rest. With 
 plenty of tobacco our cause is unconquerable. To- 
 bacco will keep up an eternal thirst. 
 
56 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 Rum, with a face purple-looking, lean, and 
 blotched, rose and said that he took a powerful 
 hold of the stomach, bowels, and brain, but must 
 confess that he took increasing pleasure in the dis- 
 eases and deaths produced by tobacco. My ad- 
 vice is, hope for complete success. 
 
 Beer, pot-bellied and bloated, rising, said that 
 he grasped the liver and made fun of the hypochon- 
 dria of his victims. He struck many down with 
 apoplexy, is now encountering much opposition, 
 but is still driving a good business of disease and 
 death. I concur in the idea that tobacco is a 
 mighty ally. Unwearied diligence, is my counsel. 
 "A continual dropping will wear away a stone." 
 
 Wine, with a cherry-looking face, and corpulent, 
 rising, said that he rejoiced to say that he left no 
 organ untouched ; that he inflicted an admirable 
 degree of pain by gout and gravel ; that he moved 
 among what is called the higher circles, was doing 
 a good business, and daily sending many to the 
 grave and hell. * Deceive, is my advice. 
 
 Cider, with a sodden aspect and red nose, rising, 
 said that he affected the stomach and liver, pro- 
 duced jaundice, gall-stones, etc. ; that he still 
 found fools enough to favor him, and that he was 
 still able to make tobacco more and more popu- 
 lar to do a great business ; that he depended very 
 much upon the agency of tobacco ; that men, as 
 the expression goes, " drank to wet their whistle, 
 and smoked to dry it." 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 57 
 
 The great chief then bowed his head, and ex- 
 tending his hand toward his compeer tobacco, 
 Tobacco arose. He was a being of great stature, 
 and the most filthy of all the crew. On the top of 
 his head rose a large tobacco plant, the leaves of 
 which he moved by mere effort of his will. His 
 skin was dry, and the color of a seared tobacco 
 leaf. One cheek was distended by an enormous 
 quid, the juice of which constantly oozing from 
 his mouth, fell in drops upon his filthy breast. A 
 jar of snuff was buckled to his side, and he kept 
 one hand titillating his proboscis with its contents, 
 while with the other he held a huge pipe, which he 
 frequently put to his mouth, and from which issued 
 a smoke like the smoke of the bottomless pit. He 
 spoke with a grating, nasal twang : " May it please 
 your Majesty, and you, ' most potent, grave, and 
 reverend signiors,' I have long known that my labors 
 were second to none in the cause, and your Majesty 
 may rest assured, as long as I find favor among the 
 posterity of Adam, the glorious cause of intemper- 
 ance will go on. To all the powers that be I bid 
 defiance to stay the onward, desolating progress of 
 inebriety as long as my articles, pipes, cigars, and 
 quids, are loved and used. , Some are astonished at 
 the favor I receive. But it is so, and your Majesty 
 is aware that I am hardly suspected of aiding the 
 cause of intemperance. 
 
 "A few only know me, though others are suspicious. 
 
58 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 Many temperance lecturers are blind to my power, 
 and I have them in my grasp. 
 
 " Only a few churches and few clergymen have 
 lifted a finger against me. Indeed, I am generally 
 esteemed a friend, — am introduced into Christian 
 society, — and while I am sowing broadcast the 
 seeds of death, I am treated as a very companion- 
 able fellow. 
 
 " Surely it has not escaped your majesty that I 
 have led more into the ragged, raving ranks of 
 intemperance than any other. 
 
 " Be it understood by this august council that no 
 sooner does a man break fellowship with me, than 
 his thirst for intoxicating drink diminishes and is 
 pretty much gone. 
 
 • " It is like cutting off the resources of a fountain. 
 Our cause is safe as long as the friends of tem- 
 perance tolerate me. 
 
 " The use of my manufactures not only creates a 
 thirst which tempts to the use of intoxicating 
 liquor, but it weakens the, whole man, and creates 
 a demand for intoxicants. I yield the palm to no 
 power in the cause. Keep men ignorant of my 
 nature, and angels may lecture on temperance with 
 the winning grace of heaven, and I will laugh at 
 their efforts forever. 
 
 "May it please your Satanic Majesty and my 
 worthy compeers, our cause is safe as long as we 
 can keep temperance men silent in regard to me. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 59 
 
 I claim that I am twin devil with Alcohol, his 
 equal. These things being so, they are sufficient 
 to convince every power here assembled that 
 smoking, chewing, and snuffing are like pillars of 
 adamant to our noble cause. 
 
 "Allow me, most noble peers, to state my amount 
 of influence. My dominion is wide. No pope, 
 no prince, no potentate wields such a sceptre ! I 
 boast of subjects from sea to sea, and from the 
 river to the ends of the earth. I count millions in 
 China, and in Turkey, Persia, Germany, and other 
 kingdoms. 
 
 " Three hundred millions and more acknowledge 
 my sway ! I am the idol-god of mighty rivers ; 
 the Ganges, Danube, Mississippi, and Connecticut 
 are all mine. I exhaust the fat valleys on their 
 borders, and make them tributary to your majesty's 
 glorious cause. (Here the cavern shook with ap- 
 plause.) Venerable compeers ! you have been 
 long in his Majesty's service against the hated race 
 of man. I am comparatively young, for less than 
 three centuries ago I began my work, and now I 
 am well intrenched in the human race, emasculat- 
 ing and demoralizing nations, and laying kings 
 and presidents at my feet. 
 
 " I annually raise four billion pounds of my poi- 
 sonous plant ) I manufacture four hundred billion 
 cigars ; I have nearly two million hands in the 
 sunny South employed more or less in its cultivation. 
 
60 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 Negroes do my work there, but white folks — 
 deacons and pious men — do it on the banks of 
 the Connecticut. I have thousands of manufac- 
 tories of cigars, meerschaums, snuff, honey-dew, 
 pigtail, and other brands of tobacco in America. 
 
 " In Europe I do business on a broader scale. 
 There I have more magnificent establishments, 
 and keep redundant supplies for my legions of 
 votaries. The human family expend one thou- 
 sand millions of dollars and more in my service 
 yearly. 
 
 " I accomplish my work in a clandestine way — 
 so much so as to elude the keenest observation. 
 I effect sudden deaths ; I form cancers ; I eat out 
 tongues ; I afflict with dyspepsia, palsy, insanity, 
 and with diseases by the score, keeping my victims 
 blind as the owl at noonday about my agency. I 
 glory in hoodwinking doctors, clergymen, and well- 
 nigh the whole posse of the Sons and Daughters of 
 Temperance. I seal their lips by inducing the 
 belief that I do no mischief. Noble peers, we 
 devils have no subjects which please us so well as 
 those who deny our agency and our existence. 
 
 " Dupes ! my genius is to deceive. 
 
 "Give me your aid, fellow-workers, in my loyal 
 purpose, and I will poison the race from pole to pole, 
 blot out the image of God, change the style of man 
 and bring on a race so scraggy and deformed, so 
 emasculated and dwarfed as to be beneath the 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 6 1 
 
 contempt of noble devils, such as I now have the 
 honor to address ! " 
 
 Here Tobacco proudly took his seat amidst the 
 boisterous acclamations of his fellow-demons. 
 
 The superior fiend, once more rising in stately 
 grandeur, pronounced a eulogy on his Prime Min- 
 ister, Tobacco, and all pandemonium reverberated 
 with the shouts of its principalities and powers. 
 
 Inconsistent Temperance Advocates. 
 
 The following is a story as related by the author 
 of " Temperance Tales." It is of an accredited 
 agent of a temperance society. He was one day 
 soliciting contributions with tobacco in his mouth, 
 when he was accosted by a gentleman : " You, sir, 
 are not a proper person to be an agent in the cause 
 of temperance, for you are not a temperance man 
 yourself. You are enslaved to tobacco." No an- 
 swer was made, but some one present afterwards 
 told the rebuker that the lecturer was one of the 
 best men in the country. He was surprised to 
 hear this, and would have sent an apology had he 
 known the agent's address. Some time after, 
 meeting this same agent looking like a different 
 man, he was beginning to apologize when he was 
 interrupted : " No apology is needed. Your re- 
 proof led to much reflection and to new resolu- 
 tions. As the consequence, you behold me to-day 
 a free man, and you are my deliverer." 
 
62 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 John B. Gough, who became a temperance lec- 
 turer while still a smoker, relates that on his way 
 to an out-door meeting a friend offered him cigars. 
 " No, thank you," he said, " I have nowhere to put 
 them." " You can put half a dozen in your cap," 
 was the reply. This he did, and so, ascending the 
 platform, addressed two thousand children. To 
 avoid taking cold he kept on his cap, forgetting 
 what it contained. At the close he exclaimed : 
 <( Now, boys, let us give three rousing cheers for 
 temperance." Lifting his cap, he waved it vigor- 
 ously, flinging the cigars right and left at his 
 audience ! It is not strange that this occurrence 
 set him thinking. At a later period, being a guest 
 at an English house, he sought the river banks for 
 a quiet smoke. Finding it difficult to light his 
 cigar he got down on his knees by a rock, shelter- 
 ing a match with his hat while he puffed. Sud- 
 denly the thought flashed upon him that if peo- 
 ple should see him they would conclude that he 
 had sought this spot for private devotion. " And 
 what am I doing ? " thought he. " What would the 
 audience say who heard me last night?" The 
 conviction of his inconsistency struck him so for- 
 cibly that he exclaimed, " I'll have no more of it ! " 
 and away into the river went both matches and 
 cigar. 
 
 " Why did you send me that pamphlet on smok- 
 ing?" said a minister to a friend. "Because I 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A N'UTSHELL. 63 
 
 thought you needed it." "Who told you that I 
 smoked?" " You told me as you go about." " I 
 will confess that I know it is wrong, and that I once 
 gave it up ; but, fool as I am, I took to it again, 
 and I have been in bondage ever since." 
 
 Claflin and the Young Man. 
 
 The following story is told about Horace B. 
 Claflin, a prominent merchant, who is quaint and 
 humorous as he is keen-witted and rich : 
 
 On the 1 5 th of February, about five o'clock, Claflin 
 was sitting alone in his office when a young man, 
 pale and careworn, timidly knocked and entered. 
 
 " Mr. Claflin," said he, •* I am in need of help. 
 I have been unable to meet certain payments, be- 
 cause certain parties have not done as they agreed 
 by me, and would like to have $10,000. I come 
 to you because you were a friend to my father, and 
 might be a friend to me." 
 
 "Come in," said Claflin, "come in and have a 
 glass of wine." "No," said the young man, " I 
 don't drink." "Have a cigar then." "No, I 
 never smoke." "Well," said the joker, "I would 
 like to accommodate you, but I don't think I can." 
 
 "Very well," said the young man as he was 
 about to leave the room. " I thought perhaps 
 you might. Good day, sir." " Hold on," said 
 Mr. Claflin. " You don't drink ? " " No." " Nor 
 smoke?" " No." " Nor gamble, nor anything of 
 the kind?" 
 
64 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 " No, sir ; I am superintendent of the 
 
 Sunday school." " Well," said Claflin, with tears 
 in his voice and his eyes, too, "you shall have it 
 .and three times the amount if you wish. Your 
 father let me have $5,000 once, and asked me the 
 same questions. He trusted me, and I will trust 
 you." 
 
 The Preacher and I. 
 
 I met the parson in the fields, 
 
 All in the twilight gray ; 
 And what do you think, and what do you think 
 
 The parson had to say ? 
 It must be owned, he talked to me 
 
 In quite a candid way : — 
 
 " My friend," he said, " it grieves me much 
 
 To know you drink and swear ; 
 Such sinful, vile, seductive ways 
 
 I pray you, sir, beware ! 
 Dash to the earth the tempting bowl, 
 
 And change your oaths to prayer." 
 
 I looked the parson in the face, 
 
 All in the twilight dim ; 
 And what do you think, and what do you think 
 
 / had to say to him ? — 
 It must be owned, I answered back 
 
 With something of a vim : — 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 65 
 
 u Parson," I said, "it grieves me much 
 
 To know you smoke and chew ; 
 Such sinful, vile, seductive ways 
 
 I pray you, sir, eschew ! 
 And, since I'm giving 'tit for tat/ 
 
 I'll tell you what I'll do : — 
 
 " Drop your Havana from your lips, 
 
 I'll dash the bowl from mine ; 
 Give up your quid, and — here's my oath — 
 
 My swearing I'll resign." 
 He went his way — a sadder man, 
 
 But wiser, I opine. 
 
66 
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 The Wife Pleading in Behalf of her Sons. 
 Some years ago, in the town of N., Billy Morse 
 wooed and won the hand of an upright, noble girl. 
 Their home was one of comfort and neatness. In 
 a few years God blessed them with a happy family 
 of little children. As the years advanced, his good 
 wife was impressed with the idea that her little boys 
 would copy their father's example ; and wisely she 
 thought. Are there habits in their father's or 
 mother's life which I should not wish my children 
 to form ? The father was a great smoker, and in 
 time little Billie began . to try to smoke, and the 
 mother, knowing how much money his father had 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 67 
 
 wasted, resolved to try to break the father's bad 
 habit. She kindly plead with him, for his dear 
 boy's sake, to relinquish the habit. After a great 
 deal of thought he resolved to try to give up the 
 use of tobacco. After days of pain, and sometimes 
 great struggles, he came off conqueror. The result 
 of his resolution was that in a year he had saved 
 over a hundred dollars, and in five years he owned 
 a tasteful little home, and had gained in strength 
 and health. 
 
 Now, my lads, if Mr. Morse had never formed 
 this habit, think how many hours of suffering he 
 might have saved. More than this, boys, you need 
 not do wrong because your parents do. Be manly, 
 do right, whatever bad examples your parents may 
 set. When you are men you will have formed your 
 own opinions and rely on them. Therefore learn 
 while young to stand alone, and stand firmly what- 
 ever opposition you may meet. 
 
 A Slave. 
 
 A man is a slave until he has learned to do without. 
 I read lately of an American who had come to the 
 conclusion that chewing tobacco was a filthy habit, 
 and that he would give it up. For a long time he 
 tried hard to do so, but in vain. He chewed many 
 things as substitutes, but the old craving remained. 
 At last, one day, he took out of his pocket a little 
 plug of tobacco, and, holding it up, said: "You 
 
68 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 are a thing and I am a man, and it shall no longer 
 be said that a man is mastered by a thing; so, 
 though I love you, here goes," and he threw it 
 away, and never again chewed tobacco. That man 
 had learned the part of life's business which con- 
 sists in doing without. It is a fine discipline to 
 give up for a week, or a month, or a year, some 
 luxury which may be harmless in itself, but which 
 is becoming too much of a necessity in our lives. 
 
 Why Girls Remain Unmarried. 
 
 The inquiry is often made, How is it that there 
 are so many fine girls in our cities unmarried and 
 likely to remain so ? AVe answer, Tobacco is one 
 cause. In old times, when you could approach a 
 young man within whispering distance without being 
 nauseated by his breath, he used, when his day's 
 work was over, to spend his evenings with some 
 good girl or girls, either around the family hearth 
 or in pleasant walks, or at some innocent place of 
 amusement. The young man of the present day 
 takes his solitary pipe and puffs away all his vitality 
 till he is as stupid as an oyster, and then goes to 
 some saloon to quench the thirst created by smok- 
 ing ; and sheds crocodile tears every time his stock- 
 ings are out at the toes, that u the girls nowadays 
 are so extravagant, one can't afford to be mar- 
 ried ! " 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 69 
 
 Tobacco and Posterity. 
 "A man," says a distinguished physician, "may 
 poison his child before it is born through the nerves 
 and blood of its mother." I have a friend who 
 was an inveterate smoker until his first child was 
 born ; that saved him. He knew that his breath 
 would poison it, and he has abandoned the perni- 
 cious weed, I trust forever. 
 
 Growing Tobacco, 
 If there is any dirtier work than raising tobacco, 
 we should like to know it. A gum issues from green 
 tobacco that covers everything that it comes in 
 contact with. The practice of tobacco-growers is, 
 to put on a shirt outside their clothes, and wear it 
 without washing all through the season. We met 
 recently a troop of men fresh from the tobacco- 
 field who might pass for Hottentots. They looked 
 as if they always burrowed in the ground, and in 
 hands and face, as well as dress, were the color of 
 woodchucks. 
 
 How to Leave Off Using Tobacco. 
 
 First, make the most of your will ; drdp tobacco 
 and resolve never to use it again in any form. Call 
 at an apothecary store and buy five cents' worth of 
 gentian root, coarsely ground. Take as much after 
 each meal, or oftener, as amounts to a common 
 quid of fine-cut or cavendish ; chew it well and 
 
70 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 swallow all the saliva. Continue this a few weeks, 
 and you will come off conqueror. Then be thank- 
 ful for freedom. 
 
 Better to teach one youth the way 
 To higher life and nobler thought 
 
 Than own the wealth of untold mines 
 By selfish hands and spirits wrought. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 7 1 
 
 How Alcohol was Discovered. 
 
 How Alcohol was Discovered. 
 
 The people who lived about seven hundred years 
 ago thought that somewhere, if they only could find 
 them, were two things that would greatly bless the 
 world. First, something that would turn iron and 
 all common metals into gold, and thus easily and 
 greatly enrich the finder; second, an " elixir of 
 life" which would prevent sickness and death, and 
 keep those who drank it forever young. 
 
 The men who tried many curious experiments in 
 search of these two wonders were called alchemists. 
 It is supposed that an Arab named Albucasis was 
 thus led to discover alcohol by distilling it from 
 wine. He thought it was the long-sought " elixir 
 of life. " He drank heavily of it, urging others to 
 do the same. His career of intoxication and vio- 
 lence was short. He had found, not the " elixir of 
 life," but the "water of death." 
 
 Alcoholic Appetite. s 
 Like all narcotic poisons, alcohol has the fatal 
 power of creating an increasing appetite for itself, 
 
72 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER j 
 
 that demands not only more frequent, but stronger 
 and larger doses. The greater its work of ruin, the 
 harder and almost impossible to overcome will be 
 its demand. 
 
 Amount of Alcohol in Fermented Liquors. 
 
 In one hundred parts of the fermented juice of 
 apples, or cider, there are from two to ten parts of 
 alcohol. In one hundred parts of beer, the fer- 
 mented juice of barley, there are from three to ten 
 parts of alcohol. 
 
 In one hundred parts of the fermented juice of 
 grapes and other kinds of fruits, or wines, there are 
 from six to twenty-five parts of alcohol. 
 
 Strong Drink. 
 However proud we may be of our powers of re- 
 sistance, the universal testimony of experience is, 
 that whatever tends to weaken our self-restraint is 
 to be avoided. Fluids containing alcohol have 
 shown such a wondrous ability to break down this 
 power of self-control, and for creating a desire and 
 appetite for such drink, that, more than all other 
 influences combined, they have overcome the re- 
 sistance of the will, and proved the allurement and 
 destruction of thousands. Those who think they 
 will stand, and those who others have thought would 
 stand, have fallen by multitudes. Any one who 
 would be on the safe side and wise side, should 
 not run the risk of tampering with strong drink, for 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 7^ 
 
 one reason : it involves in its consequences many 
 more than ourselves. Character, education, health, 
 happiness, and success demand that life should be 
 carried through without indulgence in such a peril. 
 The stomach, the liver, and the kidneys are gener- 
 ally the first organs to be embarrassed in their func- 
 tions by it. 
 
 How the brain and nervous system become in- 
 volved in the disturbance is too well known, and 
 too frequently attested by what we hear and see in 
 the darker walks of life to need extended com- 
 ment. 
 
74 
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 
 
 A Rich Rumseller's Declaration and Confession. 
 
 Employees, you may call at the office one week 
 from to-day and receive your pay for the last time 
 in this establishment. I am closing up my busi- 
 ness. Yes, I, gentlemen, I, who have dealt out 
 liquid death and damnation, To be sure, I am a 
 wholesale dealer, but that matters not. Look at 
 the bitter desolation I have caused by selling liquor. 
 My pockets are filled with gold. There are thou- 
 sands of smitten victims, and out of their mouths, 
 off their backs, and off their blighted fields, I and 
 my chosen instruments have gathered a harvest of 
 gold. I wish the pale housewife to know that I 
 have a good percentage of all that was noble in 
 the husband or kind father in yellow gold. There 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 75 
 
 are hundreds in the poorhouse, squalid and de- 
 formed, and out of all their ruin I gathered gold. 
 There are hundreds who have heard the prison 
 door, on its remorseless hinges, shrieking after them 
 as they are entombed; and I helped put them 
 there for gold. There are hundreds of new graves, 
 made within the last twelve months, that are filled 
 with sleepers, victims of my regulated traffic, and 
 I helped put them there for gold. 
 
 But, employees, one word more ! If you would 
 like, I will employ you in another place and at an- 
 other work. I have accumulated over five hundred - 
 thousand dollars, and now I have come to a reali- 
 zation of my great error. I am going to spend 
 four hundred thousand in the cause of temperance, 
 and I will give you a position helping me if you 
 want, so you need not haul that load of rum to the 
 station, but loose the bung of each barrel and pour 
 the hellish contents into the gutter. 
 
76 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 " Delirium Tremens burns the brain ; 
 
 Each artery an adder seems ; 
 A viper bites in every vein, 
 
 And devils people all his dreams. 
 Then Suicide, with poniard key, 
 
 Unlocks a red gate to the grave ; 
 The soul drifts to the boundless sea, 
 
 Unbidden on its crimson wave." 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 
 
 77 
 
 The Sailor. 
 I say, down with the pipe and the pot I 
 
 No longer will I be their slave ; 
 They would keep me forever a sot, 
 
 And hurry me quick to the grave. 
 
 I say, down with the pipe and the pot ! 
 
 In spite of the land-lubber's sneer; 
 Henceforward my earnings shall not 
 
 Go for brandy, tobacco, or beer. 
 
78 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER \ 
 
 I'm beat ! There, boys, I'll give it up, 
 
 This cursed trick of drinking ! 
 IVe nursed the devil long enough 
 
 For my own good, I'm thinking. 
 So here go bottle, pipe, cigar, 
 
 The vile confederation ! 
 Hurrah, my boys, I'm strong enough 
 
 To beat the whole creation. 
 
 IVe served the devil, boys, you know, 
 
 In shape of pipes and brandy, 
 Until he's come to count on me 
 
 As something pretty handy. 
 I know the cuss. Why, man alive, 
 
 He wants me, soul and body ! 
 His terms, you know them well enough, 
 
 Tobacco, pipes, and toddy. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 79 
 
 Why am I a Teetotaler? 
 
 1. Because ale, porter, gin, rum, brandy, wine, 
 and whiskey all contain a portion of spirit or alco- 
 hol, which is of a poisonous nature, and calculated 
 to derange the human system. 
 
 2. Because none of these drinks are ever useful, 
 but always injurious to persons in health. 
 
 3. Because drunkenness is our national beset- 
 ting sin, and leads to idleness, quarrelling, swearing, 
 fighting, stealing, adultery, murder, impiety, and 
 almost every other sin. 
 
 4. Because our drinking fashions produce a vast 
 amount of poverty, domestic misery, insolvency, 
 bankruptcy, crime, destruction of property, dis- 
 ease, and premature death. 
 
 5. Because a great deal of valuable land, time, 
 labor, and capital is worse than wasted upon mak- 
 ing, vending, and using these intoxicating drinks. 
 
 6. Because 715 millions of money are annually 
 expended upon the drunkard's drink in this land, 
 which ought to be laid out in food and the manu- 
 factures of the country. 
 
 7. Because many millions of bushels of good 
 grain are annually destroyed to make these poison- 
 ous liquors. 
 
 8. Because intemperance obstructs the progress 
 of civilization, education, religion, and every useful 
 reform. 
 
 9. Because abstinence is sure and safe, but drink- 
 
80 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 ing moderately is difficult and dangerous, and has 
 led to all the drunkenness in the country. 
 
 10. Because I find I cannot effectually warn the 
 drunkard, unless I am an entire abstainer. 
 
 ii. Because I like to join those who are exert- 
 ing themselves to promote the reformation and 
 happiness of the nation. 
 
 12. Because it is important to set a safe example 
 of perfect sobriety to our children, friends,, and 
 associates. 
 
 What Have You to Show for It? 
 
 A young man commences at the age of twenty 
 years to drink, and from twenty to twenty-three he 
 drinks but one glass of beer a day, worth five cents 
 a glass ; at twenty-three he will have spent $54.75 ; 
 from twenty-three to twenty-five, two glasses a day, 
 he will have spent $73 ; from twenty -five to thirty, 
 three glasses a day, $273.75 I fr° m thirty to thirty- 
 five, four glasses a day, $365 ; from thirty-five to 
 forty, five glasses a day, $456.25. By this time he 
 will have spent in all the sum of $1,222.75. 
 
 Now, if another young man commences at twenty, 
 and instead of spending the money named for beer 
 each year, puts it out at seven per cent, interest, 
 without any savings but this beer-money, he would 
 be worth, at the age of forty years, $2,280, having 
 saved his money, his character, his health, and per- 
 haps his soul. 
 
 Now, if you have been paying your money out 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 8 1 
 
 for beer, what have you to show for it ? Are you 
 any better, richer, happier for it ? Are you any 
 healthier than your total-abstaining friend? Has 
 your beer-drinking given you any better position in 
 society? Are your family any better off for it in 
 any way ? Does your drinking help you to lay up 
 anything of any sort to offset the bank account 
 you would have had if you had paid your beer- 
 money to the cashier? Or do you expect by means 
 of beer-drinking to lay up anything for yourself or 
 your family in the future ? If so, what is it ? 
 
 When you make a bargain there are always two 
 values. You pay your money for a pair of shoes, 
 and you have the shoes to show for it, and you can 
 wear them while you are earning money to buy 
 more ; but when you have paid your money for a 
 glass of beer, and swallowed it, what have you to 
 show for it ? Ten chances to one it makes you 
 thirsty for another glass, and another, and you get 
 a headache or a stupid feeling that does not help 
 you work, and perhaps some other bad things, 
 not worth paying for : but if you have any good 
 thing to show for it, what is it ? 
 
 Perhaps you have not yet drunk enough to count 
 up much ; if so, now is your time to forestall the 
 cost and make your bargain. Will you pay out 
 your money for the beer and lose it, or will you 
 lay it out so that you may have something to show 
 for it ? 
 
82 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 The Cost of Beer. 
 
 Last year we made in this country over nine mil- 
 lions of barrels of beer. This, at the usual retail * 
 rate of thirty dollars per barrel, comes to more 
 than $270,000,000, which the people pay out for 
 their beer. 
 
 It costs, perhaps, half that amount to make the 
 beer and sell it. This includes cost of grain and 
 other materials, and pay for labor of manufacturers, 
 retailers, and employees. The other half is clear 
 profit, and goes into the pockets of the brewers and 
 saloon-keepers. No other business brings in more 
 money. No wonder the brewers push it eagerly. 
 
 But what these men make, the people lose. 
 It is said that New York City alone pays for beer 
 about $30,000,000 a year. The cost of making this 
 beer is about $15,000,000, and that is clear loss. 
 There is nothing better to show for it than noise, 
 and broils, and stupidity, and drunkenness. And 
 then it takes a deal of time to drink all this beer. 
 Some say that the time thus lost amounts to as 
 much as the drinker pays for his beer. This would 
 be $30,000,000 for New York, which, added to the 
 first cost of the beer, $15,000,000, makes a sheer 
 loss of $45,000,000 annually for this one city. It 
 is believed that the beer of every large city in this 
 country costs more than the bread. This % amount 
 of property and time cannot be lost and you and 
 I be none the poorer for it. It makes rents and 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 83 
 
 taxes higher, and these must be made up in higher 
 rates for what people sell ; and so we all who use 
 merchandise of any kind help to pay this beer bill. 
 It is said that a small city of New Jersey spends 
 #2,000 a day for beer. Do you wonder that it is 
 bankrupt in the sum of $6,000,000? True, the city 
 itself did not spend it, but her people did, and 
 everybody felt the loss. If this beer money alone 
 were turned into the city treasury, the debt would 
 soon be paid off. A large item of cost to the city 
 is the direct expense of taking care of the drinkers. 
 It is stated that some years every arrest could be 
 traced to drink. And this is but a fair specimen 
 of the entire country. And the matter is growing 
 worse continually. The brewers expect to make us 
 drink 10,000,000 of barrels this year. 
 
 Rum and Tobacco. 
 
 FOOD BILL FOR SIX PERSONS COMPARED WITH A DRINK AND 
 TOBACCO BILL FOR ONE PERSON. 
 
 Compiled by Elizabeth Thompson, New York. 
 
 I have ascertained that the outlay in one week 
 for stimulants by the man who drinks and uses 
 tobacco, is almost as much as the man of economic 
 habits expends for food for himself, wife, and four 
 children in the same time. 
 
84 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 
 
 COMPARISONS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE WEEK. 
 
 SUNDAY — THREE MEALS FOR SIX PERSONS. 
 
 Hominy, sugar sauce, meat, soup, bread, cakes, pud- 
 ding, . 63 
 
 RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 
 
 Two beers, one gin, tobacco, cigars, treats, .... 55 
 
 MONDAY — THREE MEALS FOR SIX PERSONS. 
 
 Bread, steak, onions, rice, meat, potatoes, turnips, 
 fruit, 65 
 
 RUM, TOBACCO, TREATS, FOR ONE PERSON. 
 
 Three beers, one whiskey, two cigars, two treats, . 55 
 
 TUESDAY — THREE MEALS FOR SIX PERSONS. 
 
 Oatmeal, milk, sugar, soup, pork, onions, potatoes, 
 
 bread, 58 
 
 RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 
 
 Three gins, smoking and chewing tobacco, .... 39 
 
 WEDNESDAY — three meals for six persons. 
 Fried mush, syrup, corned beef, cabbage, bread, milk, 
 butter, 55 
 
 RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 
 
 Two whiskeys, three beers, four cigars, paper chewing, 50 
 
 THURSDAY — three meals for six persons. 
 Oatmeal, milk, pork, beans, bread, cakes, fruit, sauce, 66 
 
 RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 
 
 Three beers, two brandies, three cigars, tobacco, . . 59 
 
 FRIDAY — THREE MEALS FOR SIX PERSONS. 
 
 Beef stew, bread, bean soup, mush, milk, syrup, cheese, 5 7 
 
 RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 
 
 Four beers, tobacco, cigars, treats, 55 
 
 SATURDAY — three meals for six persons. 
 Codfish and potatoes, cheese, soup, bread, rice, milk, 
 fruit, vegetables, 53 
 
 RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 
 
 Three brandies, three treats, three cigars, .... 70 
 Food for one week for six persons, . . . #4.17 
 Rum, tobacco, and treats for one person, . . . $3.83 
 
OK, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 
 
 85 
 
 MALOY'S SALOON. 
 
 WHAT TWO LITTLE GIRLS DID. 
 
 " ^A/'HAT in the world are you going to do with 
 that old thing? " said Katy Bland to a play- 
 mate whom she met carrying a coarse sieve. 
 
 " I'm taking it to Mrs. Weaver," replied the 
 little girl, whose name was Ellen Hartley. 
 
 " What does she want with an old sieve? " asked 
 Katy. 
 
86 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 
 
 " Mother sent me this morning to see how her 
 sick baby was," answered the little girl, and while I 
 was there poor Mrs. Weaver said they were out of 
 coal, but that if she had a sieve she could get 
 enough from the ash heap in her yard to last for 
 two or three weeks. So I'm going to lend her our 
 ash-sieve." 
 
 "Why doesn't Mr. Weaver buy a load of coal? 
 It's a shame ! " said Katy. " He's at work over in 
 the quarry, and gets a dollar and a half for every 
 day's work. I've heard father say so." 
 
 " He drinks. That's the reason," replied Ellen, 
 cutting her words short, and speaking with an in- 
 dignant emphasis. 
 
 " What a dreadful thing it is to get drunk ! " said 
 Katy, her face growing serious. " I wish there 
 was no liquor, nor any taverns in the land. Why 
 don't people shut them up ? They do no good and 
 ever so much harm." 
 
 "That's just what I said to father this morning," 
 returned Ellen. 
 
 "Didn't he say they ought to be shut up?" 
 
 " No, not just that. I hardly know what he said. 
 Something about letting every one be free to do 
 right or wrong ; but I couldn't understand it." 
 
 " I can tell you what I do understand," spoke 
 out Katy, a warm flush coming into her face. 
 
 "What?" asked her friend. 
 
 " Why, that if Mr. Weaver could find no place 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 87 
 
 where they sold liquor, he wouldn't get drunk ; 
 and if he didn't spend his money for drink, he 
 could buy coal, and not leave his wife to sift over 
 an old ash-heap for something with which to make 
 a fire. That I can understand as well as anybody. 
 What's the use of these drinking-saloons, as they 
 call them? Can anybody tell ? I'm sure I don't 
 see. The baker gives us bread to eat, the shoe- 
 maker shoes to wear, and all the store-keepers 
 something good or useful for our money : but the 
 saloon-keeper has only a fiery poison, as I once 
 heard Mr. Adams say, for his customers, which 
 they drink to their shame and sorrow. I'm only a 
 little girl, but I can understand all this to be wrong. 
 The people ought to shut up the grog-shops. If 
 the drinking ones won't do it, the sober ones should. 
 I'm sure it would be better ; for then the drinking 
 ones would have to keep sober." 
 
 " And the boys couldn't get any beer or whis- 
 key," said Ellen. "What do you think! Only 
 yesterday I saw Harry Jacobs coming out of Ma- 
 "loy's saloon." 
 
 "You did?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed," answered Ellen. 
 
 "Oh, that's dreadful, isn't it? He's such a nice 
 boy." 
 
 And the two little girls looked sorrowfully at 
 each other. 
 
 "If I was only a man," spoke up Katy, after 
 
53 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER j 
 
 standing silent for a little while, "I'd do some- 
 thing. I tell you I would ! " 
 
 "What?" asked Ellen. 
 
 " I don't know just what I would do ; but I'd do 
 something. Just to think of all the men in town 
 letting fifteen or twenty other men, who are too 
 lazy to work, set up grog-shops and beer saloons to 
 make people drunk. It isn't right no way you can 
 think of it, and you can't make it right. Don't 
 you suppose the men could stop this if they would ? 
 A thousand men are stronger than twenty." 
 
 " I'm so sorry for the boys," said Ellen. " Harry 
 Jacobs is such a nice little fellow, and so is Will 
 Lyon. Almost every day I see them coming out 
 of Maloy's saloon. To think of their growing up 
 and becoming drunkards ! I feel so badly about 
 it that I can't help crying sometimes." And tears 
 actually fell over the cheeks of this tender-hearted 
 girl. 
 
 "Oh my ! If we were men ! " exclaimed Katy, 
 her face flushed with excitement. 
 
 "But we are only little girls," answered Ellen, 
 mournfully. 
 
 " May be little girls could do something if they 
 tried," suggested Katy. 
 
 " I'd try, for one, hard enough, if I knew just 
 what to- do," said Ellen. 
 
 For a few moments the two children stood look- 
 ing into each other's faces. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 89 
 
 " It just comes into my mind," said Katy, " what 
 our Sunday-school teacher told us last Sunday. 
 She said that God does good in the world by 
 human agents ; that is, by men and women and 
 children ; and that if we want to do good He will 
 show us the way. And she said, too, that the poor- 
 est and weakest little girl, with God and heaven on 
 her side, was stronger than all the hosts of hell. 
 Now, may be He will show us the way to do some- 
 thing. Oh, if we could only make the fathers see 
 the danger their sons are in, I'm sure they'd have 
 all the saloons shut up. Mr. Jacobs is a lawyer, 
 and makes great speeches ; and Mr. Lyon is rich 
 and can do almost anything he pleases. Then, 
 there is Mr. Perkins, our minister. I wonder why 
 he doesn't preach against grog-shops. I guess, if 
 he was to see his Judson going into Maloy's as I 
 have, he'd have something to say. If we could 
 just rouse them up, Ellen, there's no telling what 
 might come of it." 
 
 "Two little girls rouse up a whole town !" and 
 Ellen smiled at the thought, but shook her head. 
 
 "There's nothing like trying," answered Katy. 
 " You may set a house on fire with a tiny match." 
 
 "Ah, but then you have something to burn," re- 
 plied Ellen. 
 
 "And I should think there was something to 
 burn here," said Katy. " Only get our minister, 
 Mr. Jacobs, Mr. Lyon, and a dozen or two others 
 
90 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 to see that their sons are in danger of becoming 
 drunkards, and a fire will be kindled, I'm think- 
 ing, fierce enough to burn up all the saloons in 
 town." 
 
 "You don't mean to have them set on fire, do 
 you?" and Ellen's face grew troubled. 
 
 "Why, no, of course not that. I was only using 
 what our teacher calls a figure of speech. After 
 you've been to Mrs. Weaver's with the sieve, come 
 to our house, and we'll talk more about this. My 
 mind's all full of it, and I just feel as if we might 
 really do something." 
 
 Ellen promised, and the young friends parted. 
 Now, Katy was a bright, enthusiastic little girl, and 
 when she set her mind upon doing anything, it was 
 hard to turn her aside from her purpose. 
 
 In all the town there was not just then, perhaps, 
 a single person who felt so deeply its danger from 
 liquor-selling, nor one who desired so ardently to 
 remove the danger, as Katy Bland. The whole 
 magnitude of this evil weighed like a mountain on 
 her heart, and she almost panted with an eager 
 desire for its destruction. 
 
 When Ellen called to see Katy half an hour 
 after they parted in the garden walk, she found her 
 writing at a table in her own room. She looked 
 up with a bright, earnest face, as Ellen came in, 
 and cried out : 
 
 "What do you think I'm doing? " 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 9 1 
 
 " I can't guess/' said Ellen. 
 
 " I'm writing to the editor of the Banner" 
 
 "You!" 
 
 "Yes, I, Katy Bland; or, rather, I'm writing 
 for you and me both. For two little girls who 
 can't understand why the people should let fifteen 
 or twenty lazy men keep drinking-saloons instead 
 of earning their living at some useful work. Let 
 me read you what I have written," and Katy, with 
 a fine flush on her cheeks, and a bright sparkle in 
 her eyes, read : 
 
 " Mr. Editor, — We are two little girls, and of 
 course don't understand all about everything. 
 Now, there is something going on in the town that 
 puzzles us. It's something very bad, we think, 
 and we write to ask you if there is no way in which 
 this bad thing can be stopped. 
 
 "Just around the corner, close by where we live, 
 there is a drinking-saloon. Now, we've talked it 
 over and over again, but we can't see any good in 
 a drinking-saloon. If you know of any, we wish 
 you would tell us in your paper. The baker and 
 butcher, the shoemaker and tailor, the storekeeper, 
 the lawyer, the doctor, and the minister, are all 
 useful to us ; but we can't think of any use the 
 saloon-keeper is to anybody. But, oh dear ! 
 The harm he does, that is dreadful ! 
 
 " Now, Mr. Editor, as near as we can come to 
 it, there are about twenty saloons and grog-shops 
 
92 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 
 
 in our little town ; and twenty men at work, night 
 and day, doing all they can to hurt and destroy. 
 
 " If only the men who love liquor went to these 
 saloons, it would be bad enough ; but when we see 
 boys going in and out every day, it does seem so 
 wicked that we are amazed it is allowed to go on, 
 when it could be so easily stopped ; for, surely, two 
 or three thousand people have the right to say 
 whether twenty of their number shall hurt them or 
 not. 
 
 " Our minister never says a word against these 
 saloons ; but if he had seen his son, not much 
 older than we are, coming out of one of them, as 
 we have, may be he would preach about the evil of 
 drunkenness and liquor-selling. 
 
 " Mr , the lawyer, knows how to talk to the 
 
 people. May be, if he had seen his boy going in 
 and coming out of a saloon daily, as we have, he 
 would gather them together, and rouse them up 
 with a fiery speech to a knowledge of their danger. 
 
 a Mr. is very rich. He owns more prop-' 
 
 erty than any other man in town. He has only one 
 son, who, when his father dies, will be rich also. But 
 if he grows up to be a drunkard, of what use will 
 all his money be to him ? And he is in great dan- 
 ger, Mr. Editor ; for he, too, goes in and out of 
 the saloon we spoke about. We've seen it almost 
 every day, and it makes us feel so sorry. 
 
 " O, sir, if our minister and those two men 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 93 
 
 would only go to work and stir up the people, all 
 the saloons and grog-shops might be closed in less 
 than a week ; and then their own sons and the 
 sons of all the people would be safe. 
 
 " Won't you publish our letter, Mr. Editor? We 
 are only two little girls, and can't do anything our- 
 selves ; but may be what we say will stir up the 
 town. It doesn't look modest in us to seem to 
 know more than men and women about this mat- 
 ter, but we can't help that. It is so dreadful a 
 thing to have nice little boys learning to drink and 
 in danger of becoming drunkards, that we can't 
 help crying out against the saloon-keepers, who do 
 no good to anybody, and an awful amount of 
 
 "Two Little Girls." 
 
 "Now, what do you think of that?" asked 
 Katy, as she finished reading.. 
 
 "I'm afraid," answered Ellen, who was more 
 timid than Katy, " that if the editor should pub- 
 lish it, the minister, and Mr. Jacobs, and Mr. Lyon 
 will be offended." 
 
 " No names are given," said Katy, " and there 
 are six or seven ministers in tow T n." 
 
 " But Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Lyon will know they 
 are meant by the lawyer who makes speeches, and 
 by the richest man among us." 
 
 "Well, so much the better," returned Katy, in a 
 resolute tone. " If they know that they are meant, 
 
94 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 
 
 and that their sons are in danger, they will be more 
 likely to do something " 
 
 " May be the editor won't print it," said Ellen. 
 
 " We can only try him. Our part is done when 
 we send him the letter/' and Katy folded the paper 
 she had written, and wrote on the envelope, " To 
 the Editor of the Banner" 
 
 On the next morning Katy and Ellen read, with 
 quickly beating hearts, their communication in 
 print. And they read, also, this note by the 
 editor : 
 
 " We invite the particular attention of our read- 
 ers, one and all, to the communication in to-day's 
 paper, signed 'Two Little Girls.' From the 
 manuscript we are satisfied that it is just what it 
 purports to be ; the artless, earnest appeal and pro- 
 test of two children against the evil of dram-selling, 
 with which our town is cursed. On first reading 
 the letter we thought of laying it aside because of 
 its reference, though not by name, to two or three 
 prominent individuals. But a second reading and 
 more careful thought led us to a different conclu- 
 sion. We became deeply impressed with the idea 
 that these children were moved by an impulse from 
 heaven, that God was sending a message through 
 them, and that we had no right to impede its 
 utterance. So we print the letter word for word as 
 we received it ; and we trust that every man and 
 woman into whose hands it may come will read 
 
OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 95 
 
 and ponder it well. It is a cry of warning our 
 citizens will do well to heed.' , 
 
 A murmur of surprise ran through the town. At 
 first people talked half doubtfully one to another, 
 but soon this one and that began to speak with 
 decision and against the saloons. Every father 
 who had sons became impressed with a sense of 
 their danger; but none more strongly than Mr. 
 Jacobs and Mr. Lyon, who did not mistake the ref- 
 erence of the letter to themselves. On questioning 
 their sons, they were both grieved and alarmed to 
 find that they went almost every day to Maloy's or 
 some other drinking- saloon, and spent a good deal 
 of time there gambling in a small way with dice 
 and cards. They had taken their first step in the 
 road to ruin, and the hearts of their fathers trem- 
 bled at thought of their peril. 
 
 On the very next day the Banner contained a call 
 for a town meeting to consider the question of 
 shutting up the drinking saloons, and on the next 
 Sunday every minister preached against them. 
 
 Public sentiment, always so powerful for good or 
 evil, took in this matter the right direction, and in 
 less than two weeks every bar and dram-shop in the 
 place was closed. 
 
 And all this great and good work was begun by 
 two little girls ; children who did not feel that they 
 had any power in themselves to check the flood of 
 evil sweeping in such a destructive current over 
 
g6 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER J 
 
 their town. What seemed to them right, that they 
 did ; ^nd God, who works for good through the 
 weak as well as the strong, made them instruments 
 of blessing, as He will make every one of us if we 
 will, in singleness of heart, do the best we can to 
 help the weak and save those who are in peril. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 
 
 97 
 
 STORY OF THE ENGINEER. 
 
 " T ET me put my name down first — I can't stay 
 long ! " 
 
 It was a red-ribbon meeting, and the man was a 
 locomotive engineer, bronzed and strong, and hav- 
 ing eyes full of deep determination. He signed his 
 name in a bold, plain hand, tied a red ribbon in 
 his button-hole, and as he left the hall he said : 
 
 "As the Lord looks down upon me, I'll never 
 touch liquor again ! " 
 
 "Have you been a hard drinker?" queried a 
 man who walked beside the engineer. 
 
gS THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 "No. Fact is, I was never drunk in my life. 
 I've swallowed considerable whiskey, but I never 
 went far enough to get drunk. I shouldn't miss it 
 or be the worse off for an hour if all the intoxicat- 
 ing drink in the world was drained into the ocean." 
 
 " But you seemed eager to sign the pledge." 
 
 " So I was, and I'll keep it through thick and 
 thin, and talk temperance to every man on the 
 road." 
 
 "You must have strong reasons." 
 
 " Well, if you'll walk down to the depot, I'll tell 
 you a story on the way. It hasn't been in the 
 papers yet, and only a few of us know the facts. 
 
 You know I run the night express on the B 
 
 road. We always have at least two sleepers and a 
 coach, and sometimes we have as many as two 
 hundred passengers. It's a good road, level as a 
 floor, and pretty straight, though there is a bad 
 spot or two. The night express has the right o' 
 way, and we make fast time. It's no rare thing 
 for us to skim along at the rate of fifty miles an 
 hour for thirty or forty miles, and we rarely go 
 below thirty. One night I pulled out of Detroit 
 with two sleepers, two coaches, and the baggage 
 and mail cars. Nearly all the berths in both 
 sleepers were full, and most of the seats in the 
 coaches were occupied. It was a dark night, 
 threatening all the time to rain, and a lonesome 
 wind whistled around the cab as we left the city 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 99 
 
 behind. We were seventeen minutes late, and that 
 meant fast time all the way through. 
 
 "Well," he continued after a moment, "every- 
 thing ran along all right up to midnight. The main 
 track was kept clear for us \ the engine was in good 
 
 spirits, and we ran into D as smooth as you 
 
 please. The express coming east should meet us 
 
 fifteen miles \vest of D , but the operator at 
 
 that station had failed to receive his usual report 
 from below. That was strange, and yet it was not, 
 and after a little consultation, the conductor sent 
 me ahead. We were to keep the main track, while 
 the other train would run in on the side track. 
 Night after night our time had been so close that 
 we did not keep them waiting over two minutes, 
 and were generally in sight when they switched in. 
 
 " When we left D we went ahead at a rat- 
 tling speed, fully believing that the other train 
 
 would be on time. Nine miles from D is the 
 
 little village of Parto. There is a telegraph station 
 there, but the operator has no night work. He 
 closed his office and went home about nine o'clock, 
 and any messages on the wires for him were held 
 above or below until next morning. When I 
 sighted this station I saw a red lantern swinging 
 between the rails. Greatly astonished, I pulled up 
 the heavy train, and got a bit of news that almost 
 lifted me out of my boots. It was God's mercy, as 
 plain as this big depot. It was the operator who 
 
IOO THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 was swinging the lantern. He had been roused 
 from sleep by the whistles of a locomotive, when 
 there wasn't one within ten miles of him. He 
 heard the toot ! toot ! toot ! while he was dressing, 
 and all the way as he ran to the station, thinking 
 he had been signalled. Lo ! there was no train 
 there. Everything was as quiet as the grave. The 
 man heard his instrument clicking away, and lean- 
 ing his ear against the window, he caught these 
 words as they went through to D : 
 
 u ' For God's sake, switch the Eastern express off 
 quick ! Engineer on the Western express crazy 
 drunk, and running a mile a minute ! ' 
 
 " The operator signalled us at once. We had 
 
 left D nine miles away, and the message 
 
 couldn't have caught us anywhere except at Parto. 
 Six miles further down was the long switch. It 
 was time we were there, lacking one minute. 
 We lost two or three minutes in understanding the 
 situation and in consulting, and had just got ready 
 to switch in where we were when the head-light of 
 the other train came in view. Great heavens ! but 
 how that train was flying. The bell was ringing, 
 sparks flying, and the whistle screaming, and not a 
 man of us could raise a hand. We stood there on 
 the main track, spellbound as it were. There 
 wouldn't have been time, anyhow, either to have 
 switched in or got the passengers out. It wasn't 
 over sixty seconds before that train was upon us. 
 
OR, TOBACCO Es A NUTSHELL. IOI 
 
 I prayed to God for a breath or two, and then shut 
 my eyes and waited for death, for I hadn't the 
 strength to get out of the cab. 
 
 "Well, sir, God's mercy was revealed again. 
 Forty rods above us that locomotive jumped the 
 track, and was piled into the ditch in an awful 
 mass. Some of the coaches were considerably 
 smashed, and some of the people badly bruised, 
 but no one was killed, and of course our train 
 escaped entirely. Satan must have cared for Big 
 Tom, the other engineer. He didn't get a bruise, 
 but was up and across the fields like a deer, scream- 
 ing and shrieking like a mad tiger. It took five 
 men to bind him after he was run down, and to-day 
 he is the worst lunatic in the State. 
 
 "Tom was a good fellow," continued the engi- 
 neer, after a pause, " and he used to take his glass 
 pretty regularly. I never saw him drunk, but liquor 
 kept working away on his nerves till at last the 
 tremens caught him when he had a hundred and 
 fifty lives behind his engine. He broke out all of 
 a sudden. The fireman was thrown off the engine, 
 all steam turned on, and then Tom danced and 
 screamed, and carried on like a fiend. He'd have 
 made awful work, sir, but for God's mercy. I'm 
 trembling yet over the way he came down for us, 
 and I'll never think of it without my heart jumping 
 for my throat. Nobody asked me to sign the 
 pledge, but I wanted my name there. One such 
 
102 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 night on the road has turned me against intoxicat- 
 ing drinks, and now that I have got this red ribbon 
 on, I can talk to the boys with better face. Tom 
 is raving, as I told you, and the doctors say he'll 
 never get his reason again. Good night, sir, — my 
 train goes in ten minutes." 
 
 " Then dash the brimming cup aside, 
 And spill its purple wine; 
 Take not its madness to thy lip, 
 Let not its curse be thine." 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL, 103 
 
 NOT POVERTY, BUT BEER. 
 
 BY MARY DWINELL CHELLIS. 
 
 " TT'S no use to say any more about it. There 
 are four children younger than I am, and 
 father says I've had my share of schooling. We're 
 all boys, and we wear out clothes awful fast ; mo- 
 ther's always mending, but father complains be- 
 cause she calls for new things so often. It seems 
 to me I couldn't and wouldn't go into that horrid 
 old mill ; but I've made up my mind to it, and the 
 sooner I begin, the better. I wish father wasn't so 
 poor." 
 
 " I heard somebody say your father earned first- 
 rate wages," responded Milton Holmes, to whom 
 the above explanations and complaints were made. 
 
 " I know he does," was replied. u He earns 
 more than any other man in the shop, but he says 
 it takes every cent of his money to pay the bills. 
 I've thought it over and over a good many times, 
 and I can't understand it." 
 
 At that moment a scrap of printed paper drifted 
 to the speaker's feet, and, without purpose in what 
 he was doing, he took it from the ground and 
 smoothed it listlessly until these words arrested his 
 
104 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 attention : " It is > t ct poverty, but beer, which 
 robs our children of knowledge." He read it 
 again and again, while a new light dawned upon 
 his mind. At length he gave the paper to his com- 
 panion, who asked quickly : 
 
 " Does your father drink beer ? " 
 
 " Yes ; lots of it," answered Nathan Wilson. 
 
 " Does he chew tobacco ? " 
 
 " Lots of it. He always has his mouth full, un- 
 less he's smoking, or eating, or drinking. I heard 
 mother tell him this morning that she could sup- 
 port the family on the money he spends for what 
 does him more hurt than good. I couldn't think 
 what she meant, but I guess I know now." 
 
 " I guess you do. Beer and tobacco cost more 
 than bread and coffee. I've heard a good many 
 say that, and I've promised my mother never to 
 taste of such stuff. " 
 
 " Nobody ever asked me to promise. Wasn't it 
 strange, though, that paper should happen along 
 here just now ? I wonder how it escaped the rag- 
 pickers." 
 
 " So do I. What wretched work theirs is ! I 
 should rather do anything else than grub round the 
 streets as they do. See that old woman. There's 
 a heap of rubbish waiting for her. Let us watch 
 and see what she finds. We can sit down on that 
 pile of bricks, and she won't know we're thinking 
 about her." 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 105 
 
 So saying, Milton Holmes walked toward the 
 place indicated, while his schoolmate walked by 
 his side thoughtfully, sadly, and, it must be con- 
 fessed, with something like anger in the heart which 
 beat so tumultuously. 
 
 " Don't take it so hard," he said kindly, when 
 they were fairly seated. " Mother says there's 'most 
 always a way out of trouble, if you only go to work 
 at it patiently and with a good will." 
 
 " Your mother hasn't seen so much trouble as I 
 have. If she had, she'd know better than to say 
 that. There's trouble in the world that patience 
 and hard work don't touch." 
 
 These words startled the boys, who had forgot- 
 ten that the old rag-picker was so near as to hear 
 any remarks they might make. 
 
 " Have you had a good deal of trouble ?" asked 
 Nathan, springing to his feet. 
 
 "Yes, I have, though 'tan't often I say anything 
 about it. There was four in my family, and three 
 of them were drunkards. Don't you think that 
 would make trouble enough for the fourth one?" 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, I know it would. Was that what 
 made you so poor?" 
 
 "Yes, just that and nothing else; and it's what 
 makes other folks poor. I had two boys, and when 
 they wa'n't any larger than you be, I thought they 
 was the smartest boys anywhere round ; but they're 
 gone." 
 
106 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 
 
 « Where ?" 
 
 " I don't know ; I wish I did, though likely it 
 an't best I should. Do you ever drink any kind 
 of liquor?" 
 
 " Not a drop/' answered Milton Holmes. 
 
 "Do you?" she continued, turning to Nathan 
 Wilson. 
 
 "Is beer liquor?" he asked in response. 
 
 " Yes, it is, and it's what begins the trouble. My 
 boys begun with it, and finished with — but I don't 
 know as they've finished yet." 
 
 "Sit down and rest a minute, ,, said Nathan, 
 pitying the poor woman. " You must be dreadful 
 tired." 
 
 " I don't know as I am. My body's got so it 
 keeps going without being tired, but it hurts in 
 here," and she pressed her hand to her heart with 
 a quick, convulsive motion, while her face grew 
 deathly pale. 
 
 Thus she was forced to drop the implements of 
 her trade and accept the proffered seat, where she 
 rested for a few minutes. 
 
 " Have you got any home?" asked Milton, as 
 she reached down for her sack and hook. 
 
 "I've got a place where I stay," she replied. 
 " It's better than some have, but it an't home. I've 
 been cold and hungry a good many times, and I 
 expect to be a good many times more, but thank 
 God I ha'n't any little children to starve with me. 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 107 
 
 Don't taste of beer, boys. Don't for your souls' 
 sakes. Don't begin on the wrong track. I didn't 
 expect to come to this. Don't you suppose I hate 
 the dirt and garbage? There couldn't anybody 
 hate it any worse. But there was three drunkards 
 in my family, and they dragged down the fourth 
 one. Don't forget what I've told you." 
 
 A moment more, and this woman seemed in- 
 tent only upon the rubbish before her, and with 
 lingering gaze the boys bade her a silent farewell. 
 
 Half an hour later Nathan Wilson entered the 
 room where his mother was at work, holding in his 
 hand a scrap of paper, while his flushed face and 
 tightly-compressed lips betrayed the excitement he 
 did not care to conceal. 
 
 " I've found all about it, and it's a shame for 
 father to spend his money as he does. He needn't 
 tell me I must go to work, so to give the other 
 children a chance. If I go into that greasy old 
 mill, it will be because father cares more for beer 
 and tobacco than he does for me. He earns 
 enough to keep us all." 
 
 " Why, Nathan, what is the matter with you? I 
 never heard you talk so before." 
 
 " I didn't know enough to. Now my eyes are 
 opened, and they won't shut again very soon. Hear 
 this, mother." And the boy read aloud the words 
 which had so deeply impressed him. " That's the 
 truth, and the whole truth," he added, emphatically. 
 
108 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER \ 
 
 " I'm going to print it in large German text, and 
 hang it opposite my bed, where I can see it every 
 day of my life ; and another thing, I never'll taste 
 a drop of beer, nor let either of my brothers, if I 
 can help it. I won't use tobacco, either, and when 
 I can have my own wages I'll save a part of every 
 dollar I earn, you see if I don't." 
 
 " I hope you will," answered Mrs. Wilson in a 
 husky voice, as she brushed a tear from her eye. 
 
 For the remainder of the day Nathan occupied 
 himself with printing, finishing the last letter just 
 as the waning light warned him that night was at 
 hand. In his haste he had omitted some orna- 
 mental lines, but this did not matter to himself or 
 to those who watched every movement of his pen. 
 
 That evening he did not speak to his father. 
 Indeed, the household was strangely quiet, and as 
 Mr. Wilson looked around upon his boys he won- 
 dered at their unusual silence. He had engaged 
 work for Nathan, but he hesitated to speak of it. 
 Something in his son's face troubled him ; and all 
 the more the next morning when he felt obliged to 
 tell of the arrangements he had made. Even then 
 no word was spoken in reply, although some sig- 
 nificant glances greatly annoyed him. Before the 
 day closed, a remonstrance from Nathan's teacher 
 increased his annoyance ; but all this did not 
 change his purpose or his manner of living. His 
 habits were firmly established. His course was 
 
OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. IO9 
 
 steadily downward, while his children, one after 
 another, were taken from school to earn a scanty 
 pittance, because he had squandered a fortune 
 upon the gratification of his depraved appetites. 
 
 He taught his boys no lessons of temperance or 
 frugality. Yet as they grew to manhood people 
 marvelled at their integrity and thrift. A scrap of 
 paper drifted through the city streets had done 
 more and better for them than he who was respon- 
 sible for their existence in a world where the desti- 
 nies of children are largely dependent upon their 
 parents. 
 
 Soiled and discolored grew the talismanic words, 
 yet they retained their conspicuous position until 
 transferred to a new home where life is ordered 
 after higher standards. 
 
 In any city or large manufacturing town where 
 men find constant employment, if you will take the 
 trouble to trace to their homes their children who 
 attend school only the limited time prescribed by 
 law, you will find in nearly every instance where 
 the father is living that he spends for tobacco and 
 beer or stronger liquors a large proportion of his 
 own earnings. 
 
 The children of our country have a right to 
 happy homes and the advantages of education, 
 and every plea for total abstinence from all which 
 can intoxicate is a plea for these rights, sacred and 
 inalienable as is the liberty of which we boast. 
 
IIO THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 
 
 "Now, -to all the boys who have read this 
 I have a word to say, [book 
 
 Give heed unto my little speech, 
 
 And my advice obey. 
 Be honest, fair, sincere, and square 
 
 In all you have to do, 
 And let me tell you ere I close, 
 I neither smoke nor chew. 
 Do you ? 
 
 " Then let me say to men and boys, 
 Go forward in your might, 
 With heart aglow hoe out your row, 
 
 And work for truth and right. 
 Perhaps you wish I'd close my speech. 
 
 Well, I am nearly through ; 
 And let me say to you again, 
 I neither smoke nor chew. 
 Do you?" 
 
 8 951 
 
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