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Study and Stimulants; Or, the Use of Intoxicants and Narcotics in Relation to Intellectual Life by Alfred Arthur Reade
page 100 of 167 (59%)
G. BARNETT SMITH.
March 28, 1882.




M. TAINE.


I regret that it is not in my power to give you the information you
ask. I have not made the question a study, and have no fixed opinion
about it. All that I can say is that I have never made use of alcohol
in any form as an essential stimulant. Coffee suits me much better.
Alcohol, so far as I can judge, is good only as a physical stimulant
after great physical fatigue, and even then it should be taken in very
small quantities. As for tobacco, I have the bad habit of smoking
cigarettes, and find them useful between two ideas,--when I have the
first but have not arrived at the second; but I do not regard them as
a necessity. It is probable that there is a little diversion produced
at the same time, a little excitement and exhilaration. But every
custom of this kind becomes tyrannical, and the observations which
accompany your letter are very judicious. Among the men of letters and
men of science around me there is not one to my knowledge who in order
to think and to write has recourse to spirituous liquors; but
three-fourths of them smoke, and almost all take before their work a
cup of coffee. I have seen English journalists writing their articles
by night with the aid of a bottle of champagne. With us, the articles
are written in the day time, and our journalists have, therefore, no
necessity to resort to this stimulant.

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