started in an attempt to find the opening through which he had entered
the cellar, but to his surprise and terror he could not find it.

"O Will," he said, "this is all your fault! You know I didn't want to
smoke. I wish now that I hadn't listened to you. Father said tobacco
would make me sick, but I didn't know it would be so bad as this. Tell
me, does it always make people sick? and do they ever die?"

"Yes, it usually makes them pretty sick," Will answered. "But they
always get over it; and each time they smoke, they get more used to it,
or something, and after a while they don't get sick at all. Look at me.
It never makes me sick, but it did at first. Surely you can stand a
little sickness when you know that it is going to make a man of you!"

John concluded that under those circumstances he could endure his
suffering. But he did not try to smoke any more that morning. With
Will's assistance he found the doorway of the cellar and went out where
the air was more pure. Gradually, he began to feel better. When dinner
time came, however, he did not care to eat; but he kept repeating to
himself, "It won't be this way long, and I can afford to suffer if it
will make a man of me." How sad to think that one so young should be
so deceived!

Could someone have taught him then that the sick feeling that had so
distressed him was caused by the strong poison contained in the tobacco,
it might have encouraged him never to touch it again. Had his father
explained that every pound of tobacco contains three hundred and twenty
grains of this poison, one grain of which will kill a large dog in about
three minutes; or told him the story of how a man once ran a needle and
thread that had been dipped in the poison through the skin of a frog and