SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
by Mark Twain
Part 2.
CONTENTS:
[written about 1865]
"MORAL STATISTICIAN."—I don't want any of your statistics; I took yourwhole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. Youare always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how muchhis intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents hewastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatalpractice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinkingcoffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass ofwine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. And you are always figuring out howmany women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion ofwearing expansive hoops, etc., etc., etc. You never see more than oneside of the question. You are blind to the fact that most old men inAmerica smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, theyought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine andsurvive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yetgrow older and fatter all the time. And you never by to find out howmuch solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smokingin the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he wouldsave by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lostin a lifetime your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you cansave money by denying yourself all the little vicious enjoyments forfifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put itto? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul.