Library: An Unquiet History by Matthem Battles (14)

In the same issue, William Frederick Poole (who ran the Chicago Public Library) also draws a parallel between the smoking and reading habbits. To Poole, however, the tobacco reference was not entirely negative. “I smoked tobacco and read Milton at the same time,” he declares, “and for the same motive: to find out what was the recondite charm in them that gave my father so much pleasure.” But too many people, Poole admits, are dissuaded by that first unpleasant impression of tobacco from any further consideration of its charms.

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