Book Description

The circumstances in which I gave up smoking were these: I was a mere bachelor, drifting toward what I now see to be a tragic middle age. I had becomeso accustomed to smoke issuing from my mouth that I felt incomplete without it; indeed, thetime came when I could refrain from smoking if doing nothing else, but hardly during the hoursof toil. To lay aside my pipe was to find myself soon afterward wandering restlessly round mytable. No blind beggar was ever more abjectly led by his dog, or more loath to cut the string.I am much better without tobacco, and already have a difficulty in sympathizing with theman I used to be. Even to call him up, as it were, and regard him without prejudice is a difficulttask, for we forget the old selves on whom we have turned our backs, as we forget a street thathas been reconstructed. Does the freed slave always shiver at the crack of a whip? I fancy not, for I recall but dimly, and without acute suffering, the horrors of my smoking days. There werenights when I awoke with a pain at my heart that made me hold my breath. I did not dare move.After perhaps ten minutes of dread, I would shift my position an inch at a time. Less frequentlyI felt this sting in the daytime, and believed I was dying while my friends were talking to me. Inever mentioned these experiences to a human being; indeed, though a medical man wasamong my companions, I cunningly deceived him on the rare occasions when he questioned meabout the amount of tobacco I was consuming weekly. Often in the dark I not only vowed togive up smoking, but wondered why I cared for it. Next morning I went straight from breakfastto my pipe, without the smallest struggle with myself. Latterly I knew, while resolving to breakmyself of the habit, that I would be better employed trying to sleep. I had elaborate ways ofcheating myself, but it became disagreeable to me to know how many ounces of tobacco I wassmoking weekly. Often I smoked cigarettes to reduce the number of my cigar