How John Became a Man | Page 9

wise old man explained the meaning of the four trials.
"This, my son," he said, "is just what happens to our bad habits and
passions. When they are young and weak, we can by a little
watchfulness and by a little discipline, easily tear them up; but if we let
them cast their roots deep down into our souls, no human power can
uproot them. Only the almighty hand of the Creator can pluck them out.
For this reason, my boy, watch your first impulses."
Or, could John have heard the story of the giant who fell in with a
company of pigmies, he might have taken a different course. The giant
roared with laughter at the insignificant stature and wonderful
boastings of the pigmies. He ridiculed their threats when they told what
they expected to do to him; but when he fell asleep that night, he was at
their mercy. And he did not know until he awoke in the morning that
while he was asleep these tiny people of whom he had made sport had
bound him with innumerable threads and that he was their helpless
captive. But John knew nothing of these stories or of other things that
teach the lessons he so much needed; and perhaps his father did not
know, so that he could tell his son what he should have been told.
The use of tobacco is an evil. When God made tobacco and pronounced
it good, He did not mean for it to go into the mouth of any man or
woman, much less into the mouths of children. Tobacco is a deadly
poison; and the constant use of any poison must injure the body of the
one who uses it. When it has sapped the strength from both the mind
and the body, it leaves the individual weakened in every way and
makes it harder for him to live a good, pure life.
No person who uses tobacco may be said to be perfectly well. Such a
person may not realize how his health is impaired, because the stupor
that the poison produces numbs his sensibilities; but the very appetite
he has for tobacco is in itself a disease. In order for an habitual user to
realize the harm that tobacco is doing to his health, he has simply to
stop its use for a short time and watch the effect on his system.
Tobacco is not a food that God intended man to eat. In man's case it

feeds only a craving that it has itself created. But the leaves of the
tobacco plant do serve as food for the large, green worms that live and
thrive in tobacco fields. Yes; tobacco is "very good" for the "creeping
things" for which it was created; but it was not intended as food for
man.
Could John and his cousins have understood all this when the next
tobacco famine came to them, it seems that each would surely have
resisted the temptation to stoop down, pick up a partly chewed quid of
tobacco, cram it greedily into his watering mouth, and chew it as
though it was the sweetest morsel he had ever tasted. But the boys did
not know. They thought such things were manly.
CHAPTER IV
Early School Days
By the time John was eight years old, the evil influences with which he
had been surrounded in his uncle's home were rapidly telling on him.
To be sure, there was still the same pathetic expression in his deep,
brown eyes, and now and then there could be observed in them a
mischievous glance or a merry twinkle; but his general appearance was
that of a sadly neglected child. Still the busy aunt took little notice
either of him or of her own boys.
In his heart John was longing for someone to take an interest in him
and to love him--someone to whom he could go with his boyish
heartaches and from whom he could gain the sympathy for which his
heart was craving. To be sure, his father was still kind, and sometimes
John would imagine that he could even feel his father's love. At such
times the boy would press closer to his parent, hoping that he would at
least with his arm caress him; but his father did not understand. He
could see only the outward roughness; and he said in his heart:
"It is all because he has never had a chance. He has grown up here on
the prairie like a wild thing. He has never been to school, and I must
send him at once."

With this purpose in his heart John's father decided to return with his
child to the place that had once been his happy home. In making the
change there were, of course,