Was
that acting the part of a man?
This happened many years ago. Last week amidst a crowd who surrounded a
polling booth, there stood a man about forty years of age--he looked
twenty years older. On his head was a battered hat; he wore a seedy,
black coat; both his hands were in his pockets, and in his mouth the
stump of a cigar which had been half-smoked by another man; his face was
bloated, his eyes bleared and languid. Even the vulgar crowd looked at
him with contempt.
I looked into his face thinking there was in it a resemblance to one I
had known. Slowly and painfully came the sad truth, that the drunken
creature was Dick Harris; he had become a man but he was a lost man.
It has often been said, "How great a matter a little fire kindleth." The
spark which kindled a blaze among Dick's evil passions, was the spark
which lit the tobacco pipe at school. Bad habits are easily acquired,
but they are hard to get rid of. See what smoking had done for Dick. It
led him to drink, and the two habits have left him a wreck.
But you say to me, "There are many thousands who smoke, and yet are
strong men." It is so. But in almost all cases these strong smokers did
not begin the habit while they were boys; if they had done so, the
likelihood is, they never would have become strong men.
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