Thieves of Homes

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. TOBACCO. We now present to the notice of the reader what we are pleased to denominate the second thief in and of homes or their comforts. We place him second, not because next to alcohol his work is most ruinous, but most prevalent, and moreover because he nearly always accompanies alcohol, though we...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. TOBACCO. We now present to the notice of the reader what we are pleased to denominate the second thief in and of homes or their comforts. We place him second, not because next to alcohol his work is most ruinous, but most prevalent, and moreover because he nearly always accompanies alcohol, though we must say, alcohol does not, by great odds, always accompany him. NATURE AND TREATMENT. He is far less tyrannical. His thieving work not usually so rapid. Not so desolating or destructive, in thousands of instances really unperccptibly harmful, only of visible injury as through them he reaches others, where he can be less easily withstood, restrained or supported. A thief that is entertained at countless firesides, has long been guest in happiest homes, is well spoken of by many educated and refined persons and commended to others as a most harmless fellow, giving substantial comfort for all the means, and of course where abundance does not exist, comfort otherwise purchasable with the means, which he takes. A thief that is seldom denounced in the public prints, authors and editors themselves being for the most part willing to his abstraction;against whom even the pulpit is largely silent, the clergy being in vast numbers among his victims or subjects. A thief that has been eulogized in prose and poetry, in centuries past and the present, by good men, some very good men of various tongues and countries. A thief whose thievings are limited, as he cannot seriously damage reputation, cannot often deprive of position attained to, nor once in many times interfere with our attainment of a position desired. Cannot so surely, nor generally, nor directly, steal from us a hope of blessedness hereafter or prevent entrance thereupon, though he may be in cases, as shall be seen, in...