When Twain was 15 years old, he joined a temperance society that pledged abstinence from tobacco. He had been smoking since he was nine years old. He joined the society for its red sash, which members were allowed to wear in two parades a year. He lasted three months, from the May Day parade through the Fourth of July parade. As soon as he resigned, he enjoyed the stub of a cigar he found on the ground. Tobacco was cheap where he lived, and there was no law that prevented boys from buying it. Throughout his early and middle age, he says, Twain sometimes tortured himself by abstaining from smoking. He never regretted it, he says, because it felt so wonderful to pick it up again.
When Twain was 15, a boy named Jim.....
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