Scouting for Boys: The Original 1908 Edition

Endurance

Alcohol is now shown to be quite useless as a health-giving drink, and it is mere poison when a man takes too much of it. A man who is in the habit of drinking wine or spirits in strong doses every day is not the slightest use for scouting, and very little use for anything else. Similarly a man who smokes too much. The best war scouts don't smoke because it weakens their eyesight; it sometimes makes them shaky and nervous; it spoils their noses for smelling (which is of great importance at night); and the glow of their pipes or the scent of tobacco carried on them at night gives them away to watchful enemies. They are not such fools as to smoke. No boy ever began smoking because he liked it, but because he thought it made him look like a grown-up man. As a matter of fact, it generally makes him look like a little ass.

Robert Baden-Powell

this book is an all-time bestseller in the english speaking world, second only to the Bible...