Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/343

Rh and habit, which has such a dehumanizing effect that the smoker not only loses his aesthetic sense, but actually his five senses as well; he no longer feels how the smoke effects his eyes, no longer sees how disgustingly the tobacco juice soils his fingers and lips, he does not hear how idiotic this continual puffing sounds, he does not smell the disagreeable odor of this Indian perfume, and he does not taste the diabolical flavor of the noxious herb. A magnificent enjoyment, indeed, that one can fully appreciate only after having lost both his reason and his five senses together. And a great many of the members of that sex which calls itself the strong sex, purchase.this enjoyment with the ruin of their health and their finances. If Cleopatra dissolves a precious pearl in a glass of wine and drinks it, I can understand the sense of this nonsense; I can also understand why Lucullus, on special occasions, serves a dish of peacocks' tongues, or another gastronomic genius devours carps that have been fed on human flesh. But how a man can spend half a dollar or even a dollar for a roll of stinking herb, which he tosses about between his unsavory lips for five minutes, puffing and cutting up faces the while, to throw the chewed half out of the window, I cannot understand. And yet there are multitudes of such monsters. They, of course, smoke a cheaper variety, but since their front chimney is puffing all day long, they do not escape more cheaply in the end, than those insane aristocrats of the tobacco