wine is a clog to the pen, not an inspiration. I have never seen the
time when I could write to my satisfaction after drinking even one
glass of wine. As regards smoking, my testimony is of the opposite
character. I am forty-six years old, and I have smoked immoderately
during thirty-eight years, with the exception of a few intervals,
which I will speak of presently. During the first seven years of my
life I had no health--I may almost say that I lived on allopathic
medicine, but since that period I have hardly known what sickness is.
My health has been excellent, and remains so. As I have already said,
I began to smoke immoderately when I was eight years old; that is, I
began with one hundred cigars a month, and by the time I was twenty I
had increased my allowance to two hundred a month. Before I was
thirty, I had increased it to three hundred a month. I think I do not
smoke more than that now; I am quite sure I never smoke less. Once,
when I was fifteen, I ceased from smoking for three months, but I do
not remember whether the effect resulting was good or evil. I repeated
this experiment when I was twenty-two; again I do not remember what
the result was. I repeated the experiment once more, when I was
thirty-four, and ceased from smoking during a year and a half. My
health did not improve, because it was not possible to improve health
which was already perfect. As I never permitted myself to regret this
abstinence, I experienced no sort of inconvenience from it. I wrote
nothing but occasional magazine articles during pastime, find as I
never wrote one except under strong impulse, I observed no lapse of
facility. But by and by I sat down with a contract behind me to write
a book of five or six hundred pages--the book called "Roughing it"--
and then I found myself most seriously obstructed. I was three weeks
writing six chapters. Then I gave up the fight, resumed my three
hundred cigars, burned the six chapters, and wrote the book in three
months, without any bother or difficulty. I find cigar smoking to be