habits that so many boys form while they are young. You remember I told
you that smoking and chewing tobacco ruin many a life. Now, I am not
going to say that you cannot use tobacco; but I wish that for my sake,
as well as for your own, you would let it alone, for it is indeed a very
bad habit."

To this advice John made no reply; for an appetite was being formed,
and in his heart he decided to keep right on. It would have been better
could his father have remembered the temptations of his own boyhood
days. He might then have more fully realized how next to impossible it
is for a parent to availingly teach his child to do something without
first setting before the child an example that is worthy of imitation.
Could he have helped his little son to understand the true meaning of
manhood and the necessity of building up within himself in youth a
noble, honest, and always-to-be-depended-upon character, as well as the
need of developing a strong body, he might have laid a foundation upon
which John could have later safely builded.

John dearly loved his father and wanted to please him. And to his mind
he could best please his father by as quickly as possible becoming a
man. So, with the thought of early manhood ever before him, he felt
that, in using tobacco, he was doing right. And then, too, Charley had
learned to smoke and chew, and it would be very hard indeed to be near
the boys and not to join in with them.

By the time that John had passed his seventh birthday, the small amount
of tobacco that was kept in the cellar was not sufficient to fill the
demand of the three boys without too rapidly diminishing the uncle's
supply, and the boys decided to look elsewhere.