Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1883 — A Public Nuisance. [ARTICLE]

A Public Nuisance.

It is strange, but it does not seem to have struck the generality of chewers and especially smokers, that their acts are worse than rude and ungentlemanly, that they are a positive offense against decency. /Civilization has placed a barrier againfet eating in public even so much as an apple, or the most innocent and most inviting kind of food, except under the stress of necessity; yet aeonfirmed tobacco user or cigar smoker will smoke and chew the filthiest of weeds, stifling and annoying persons iu his vicinity with fumes and disgusting debris, as if he was privileged to be a nuisance and had a right to taint the air and pollute his surroundings, which must not be interfered with. Now, where does any man get the right ? It is his business' in this world to improve upon himself, to make the world the happier and better and brighter and cleaner for his coming, to help others and not put obstacles or hindrances in their way; and the smoker does this; he sets a bad example to boys, who teke up smoking as a manly habit, becaiise they see men indulge in it, and are thus led to drinking and every evil practice. There is a wide-spread feeling, to which women largely subscribe, that men need a wide indulgence, that they cannot restrain their passions ana appetites, that it is not to be expected of them that they should. But this ought not to be true, and is not true of men who have got beyond the savage, whose moral nature predominates, who have learned to exercise their better faculties, and whose strength has been tested and acquired, as much in resisting evil as in yielding to it. This so-called ne- . cessity for bolstering up and stimulating up, and strengthening up with vile decoctions and injurious narcotics is confession of weakness, not evidence of strength;, it is a sign of inferiority and cowardice, not an evidence of courage or manluiess. Women are subject to much heavier drafts upon their nerves than men, but this would not be considered as any valid excuse for adopting their vulgar, unclean methods of solace ' and consolation. Are men naturally so 2weak they can not bear the ills of life without resort to such depraved helps to carry the burden? Are they so brutish as not to be able to sustain their place in the march of reason, intelligence and progressive civilization ? We do not believe it.— Demorest’s Monthly.