Dear Sir—I this minute finished my day's work of 3000 words &Ⓐemendation seized the first letter in the pile & opened it, & found you saying disrespectful things of the good friend under whose powerful inspiration I had been enabled to grind out that grist of instructive literature. But I forgive you, for you have smoked yourself, & are therefore entitled to opinions & a hearing upon your subject; but the reformers I can't stand are the old maids & other presumptuous rascals who lecture people against smoking when they don't know what they are talking about.

I can applaud—& I do—for you are sincere, & sincerity is always respectworthy, no matter what is the doctrine it preaches—but I cannot follow you. I would exactly as willingly lose my appetite for food as my appetite for smoking. No, I would give up the former appetite before the latter one, I think. So you see I can't be reformed; mine is a hopeless case.

You ask me some hard questions, but I lack the time to attempt an answer. One hint I can give you, though.

A man ought never, never, never to pledge his word to reform any habit. It is a chain that will chafe; he can't keep it from chafing, no matter if it does bind the victim to a good cause; & when the man has endured that chafing some time he will break that chain, sure, unless he is a man of extraordinary strength of will & stubbornness of purpose.

No, the average man should simply quit his bad habit without making any promises, even to himself. Feeling himself wholly free to take it up again whenever he pleases, he can resist temptation without an effort, & as long as he pleases.

Am I theorizing? No, this is personal experience. I am not strong-willed, but I can break off any habit whenever I please, & do it permanently—leaving not the slightest “hankering” behind to disturb my sincerity. I was a slave to tobacco chewing many years ago. I left off the habit—& permanently—without the least trouble.

During ten years I always drank a whiskey punch at bedtime. I broke that off without any trouble. But as that is more recent, I make it a point to drink a whisky punch once every month to remind myself that I am a free man, & wholly without trammels of any kind. You must follow the methods which seem best to you, but I am well convinced that the man who persuades his neighbor to tie himself to a pledge is doing him a deep injury.

No, I am past reform, but I am in sympathy with your work, nevertheless, for the reason that, while tobacco is merely food for me, I know it to be poison to many others.