“You are getting me into a bad habit, spoiling my morals in a physical sense,” said Smith, addressing us as we sat after supper around our camp-fire; “I find myself taking to the pipe out here, in these old woods, with a relish I never have at home.  It seems to agree with me here, and I expect by the time I get back to civilization, I shall be as great a smoker as the Doctor or Spalding.  If I do, I shall have to pay for it by indigestion and hypochondria, things that you of the fat kine, know nothing about.”

“Well,” replied the Doctor, “You will only have to call on me as you did last month, and then send for Spalding to draw your will, as you did the next day, when you were as well as I am, excepting that kink in your head about your going to die.”

“Why, the truth is,” retorted Smith, “I had made up my mind, after twelve hours consideration, to take the medicine you left, and I appeal to H——­here, if it was after that, anything more than a reasonable precaution to be prepared for any contingency that might happen.  Your medicines, Doctor, and the testamentary disposition of a man’s worldly effects, are very natural associations.”

“Very well,” said the Doctor; “you’ll send for me again in a month after our return, and in that case, it may be, that the money you paid Spalding for drawing your will, will not have been thrown away.  But in regard to the use of the pipe; I propose that we call upon Spalding, for a legal opinion, or an argument in its favor.  It’s his business to defend criminals, and I file an accusation against smoking generally, excepting, however, from the indictments the use of the pipe, as in some sort a necessity, on all such excursions as ours.”

“I shall not undertake,” said Spalding, “to enter into a labored defence of the use of tobacco in any form.  I only move for a mitigation of punishment, and will state the circumstances upon which I base my appeal to the clemency of the court.  The exception in the indictment, enables me to avoid the plea of necessity, which I should have interposed, founded upon a huge forest meal, and the abundance as well as impertinence of the musquitoes of these woods.”

“I called the other day upon a venerable friend and client, who is travelling the down hill of life quietly, and though with the present summer he will have accomplished his three score years and ten, his voice is as cheerful, and his heart as young, as they were decades ago, when his manhood was in the glory and strength of its prime.  I found him sitting in his great arm-chair, smoking his accustomed pipe, reading the evening papers.  He seemed to be so calm, and happy, as the smoke went wreathing up from his lips, that I could not for the moment refrain from envying the calmness and repose which were visible all around him.  He has smoked his morning and evening pipe, in his quiet way, for nearly half a century.  When engaged in the active business of life, struggling with its cares, and fighting its battles,