Life — January 29, 1885 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- LIFE: SOCIAL TORTURES.—No. 7. LEARNING TO BE “MANLY.”"—A TRACT. ambition of appearing to be manly fires the young Ameri- can heart. At this period is sown the seed of small vices which afterwards grows into such a rank and portentious crop. To perch on the end of a wagon and blow the blue smoke in rings into the air, * seems so demigodlike an achievement, that, through endless qualms and agonizing nausea, many boys learn the noble art of smoking, even as the young Indian “bucks” torture and lacerate themselves before they start out upon the war-path. It is absurd to hang from a tree by a hook until the barbed iron is torn from the quivering flesh; we all admit that, but to destroy the nerves and lungs by inhaling tobacco is only animad- verted against by the “little Robert Reed,” who “never uses tobacco, since it is a filthy weed.” After a lung-destroying apprenticeship devoted to cigar- ettes, the “ paper deaths” of medical jurisprudence, the now case-hardened smoker addicts himself to a meerschaum pipe, to the coloring of which he ‘pledges “his life, his liberty | and his sacred honor ;” the strongest, blackest tobacco is | constantly burned in this altar, that it may become the quicker darkened ; the pipe is nursed with infinite pains of | of cleaning, rubbing and waxing; in fact it could not be waxed afterwards if it were the Harvard Foot-ball Team. Long afternoons, which might have been spent perhaps over the “Integral Calculus,” are devoted to coloring the pipe, though the smoker himself derives no pleasure from the operation. How many lives are shortened by this persistent devotion to nicotine! The pipes used by these * manly smo- kers " are always very heavy and ill-balanced, and are apt to be richly carved, so that they require the most delicate hand- ling. 63 Certainly a white-haired boy of eighteen, smoking Perique tobacco in a pipe which nearly dislocates his jaw, appears “manly,” there is no doubt of that. It is an edifying specta- cle to see Charlie Tuffnut, who was drinking “strawberry T a certain period of life the | cream soda water” six months ago at St. Paul's, call for a “gin and wormwood cocktail ” before breakfast. O yes; it is “manly! To be sure the lad shudders as if he were drink- ing the “ black drink of Death,” and not the “ pick-me-up ;” but then Charlie is “one of the most popular men in his class, fellows, and has a pretty good knowledge of the world.” And when we think of the many racking headaches and IT IS EDIFYING TO SEE CHARLIE TUFFNUT CALL FOR A GIN AND WORMWOOD COCKTAIL BEFORE BREAKFAST. awful discomforts he will haye to undergo, before he loses his “knowledge of the world " and discovers that “life would be very agreeable, were it not for its pleasures”, we feel very, | very weary. DUDUS LITERATUS. E read the backs of all his books, And sometimes scanned their title-pages ; He crammed his mind by hooks and crooks With pregnant saws of wits and sages. Eye-glasses perched upon his nose, A dainty love-lock, curled, pomaded, Low on his brow, and scent of rose His mouchotr's creamy folds pervaded. Rich in encyclopzdic lore He would be thought by all who knew him To hang about the clubs and wore Scholastic airs, as if to woo him The muses all their graces bare And lisped the rune of song and fable ; Thus fed his mind on tid-bits rare, As crumbs fell from the scholar’s table. Quotation whet his feeble wits, The daily papers did his thinking, And served him points and pungent hits As ever, without blush or blinking, Of arts and sciences, reviews, The latest sms and cranks and crazes— His brain a scrap-bag full of views— He rambled on in wildering mazes. HAROLD VAN SANTVOORD. comicbooks.com