Now that's encouraging, even though I shouldn't add another member to my congregation. If any other "brother" feels like "speaking out in meetin'" and relating a similar experience, so much the better; but in any event I shall not cease doing my best to make proselytes. "You ought to let up on a poor fellow a little," said a smoker to me not long since; "you ought to have a little charity for a fellow." Now I don't think that. My charity is for those who silently suffer from this selfish indulgence. For the poor girls, who stand on their weary feet hours behind the counters of shops, where the master sits with his feet up, smoking till their poor heads ache, and their cheeks crimson with the polluted air, roaring for them to shut the door or window if they so much as open a crevice for relief. My charity is for myself, when, seated in a car or omnibus, some "gentleman" who has just thrown away his cigar stump, places himself next to me, and compels me to inhale his horrible breath and touch his noxious coat-sleeve. My charity is for myself, when Mike O'Brien, who is in my cellar, getting in coal, sits down on the top of it, lights his pipe, and sends up the nasty fumes into the parlor and all over the house. My charity is for myself, when the proofs of my forthcoming book are sent me to read, to be obliged to hang them out of the window, like signals of distress, before I can correct them without absolute nausea. Nor am I to be mollified by the sample-package of "Fanny Fern Tobacco" once sent me. Now I felt complimented, when a little waif of a black baby, picked up in the streets of a neighboring city, was named for me; also when a handcart was christened ditto; also a mud-scow; but tobacco—excuse me!

I read in a paper, the other day, of an ancient institution called "smoking-tongs," constructed to hold a live coal so securely, as to admit of its being passed round the room; women, at that time, as an act of hospitality, used to approach their male guests with the same, and light their pipes for them. I should have liked to have had that office; but I don't think I should have applied the live coal to the pipes!