Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/350

334 and at the same time an immense falling off of the means of the enemy. Really, when one thinks of this result, and considers how easily it might be attained, and must live to see that nobody is interested in it, he can justly exclaim: ‘So long as men smoke tobacco they are not free and cannot become free!'

"The friends of liberty in all countries ought to distinguish themselves by ceasing to smoke, and by contributing their tobacco money henceforth to liberty! I would venture to begin a new era from the day when this resolve would go into practice. Very well, then, show that you are men, like my husband; from the 22d of February, the birthday of Washington, no enemy of slavery and no friend of revolution ought any longer to smoke!

"Another advantage which Mr. Oelkopf has passed over, consists in the increased ability to think, the restoration of the mind. My husband confessed to me that he invariably stopped thinking when he began to smoke, and that this was the chief enjoyment which the vice afforded him. What a confession, what weakness! A man whose chief pride ought to be his ability to think, strives to escape thought by means of a poison! And what does he exchange it for? I asked my husband: ‘What did you think as a man if you did not think as a smoker? In what did the "pleasure" exist, if by depriving you of thought, it deprived you of the means of becoming conscious of the "pleasure?" What