foolish nobleman is asked by some boon companions in a tavern: "Will
your lordship take any tobacco?" when another sneers, "'Sheart! he
cannot put it through his nose!" His lordship was apparently not well
versed in the "slights."

Taking tobacco was clearly an accomplishment to be studied seriously.
Shift, a professor of the art in Jonson's play, puts up a bill in St.
Paul's--the recognized centre for advertisements and commercial
business of every kind--in which he offers to teach any young
gentleman newly come into his inheritance, who wishes to be as exactly
qualified as the best of the ordinary-hunting gallants are--"to
entertain the most gentlemanlike use of tobacco; as first, to give it
the most exquisite perfume; then to know all the delicate sweet forms
for the assumption of it; as also the rare corollary and practice of
the Cuban ebolition, euripus and whiff, which he shall receive, or
take in here at London, and evaporate at Uxbridge, or farther, if it
please him."

Taking the whiff, it has been suggested, may have been either a
swallowing of the smoke, or a retaining it in the throat for a given
space of time; but what may be meant by the "Cuban ebolition" or the
"euripus" is perhaps best left to the imagination. "Ebolition" is
simply a variant of "ebullition," and "ebullition," as applied with
burlesque intent to rapid smoking--the vapour bubbling rapidly from
the pipe-bowl--is intelligible enough, but why Cuban? "Euripus" was
the name, in ancient geography, of the channel between Eubœa
(Negropont) and the mainland--a passage which was celebrated for the
violence and uncertainty of its currents--and hence the name was
occasionally applied by our older writers to any strait or sea-channel
having like characteristics. The use of the word in connexion with