made of American tobacco are to be found everywhere through the Empire. But there is an important fact to be noted: the average Japanese uses not more than one-third the number of cigarettes that an American user of them would consider necessary. Japanese who prefer pipes carry them thrust through the girdle, from which depends a bag of tobacco. The bowls of the pipes are so tiny that the smoke means but a dozen light whiffs. A dozen or fifteen smokes in a day is considered sufficient for any sane man. This means less than a diurnal use of two cigars of average strength. Cigars, while occasionally used, are affected mainly by those of the Japanese who wish to be extremely Caucasian in their habits.
From their conduct to date, it does not seem probable that the Japanese, after fifty years of exposure to our Western abuses, will ever become too much addicted to the use of alcohol. There is just a chance that in time the seductiveness of tobacco will work for the partial weakening of the race that is, at present, the strongest and healthiest in the world.
