began to smoke in days when the task was one of some danger, and paid
the penalty of my crime. I was flogged most fiercely for my first cigar;
for, being asked to dine one Sunday evening with a half-pay colonel of
dragoons (the gallant, simple, humorous Shortcut--heaven bless him!--I
have had many a guinea from him who had so few), he insisted upon my
smoking in his room at the "Salopian," and the consequence was, that I
became so violently ill as to be reported intoxicated upon my return
to Slaughter-House School, where I was a boarder, and I was whipped the
next morning for my peccadillo. At Christ Church, one of our tutors was
the celebrated lamented Otto Rose, who would have been a bishop under
the present Government, had not an immoderate indulgence in water-gruel
cut short his elegant and useful career. He was a good man, a pretty
scholar and poet (the episode upon the discovery of eau-de-Cologne,
in his prize-poem on "The Rhine," was considered a masterpiece of art,
though I am not much of a judge myself upon such matters), and he was as
remarkable for his fondness for a tuft as for his nervous antipathy to
tobacco. As ill-luck would have it, my rooms (in Tom Quad) were exactly
under his; and I was grown by this time to be a confirmed smoker. I was
a baronet's son (we are of James the First's creation), and I do believe
our tutor could have pardoned any crime in the world but this. He had
seen me in a tandem, and at that moment was seized with a violent fit
of sneezing--(sternutatory paroxysm he called it)--at the conclusion of
which I was a mile down the Woodstock Road. He had seen me in pink, as
we used to call it, swaggering in the open sunshine across a grass-plat
in the court; but spied out opportunely a servitor, one Todhunter by
name, who was going to morning chapel with his shoestring untied,
and forthwith sprung towards that unfortunate person, to set him an
imposition. Everything, in fact, but tobacco he could forgive. Why
did cursed fortune bring him into the rooms over mine? The odor of the
cigars made his gentle spirit quite furious; and one luckless morning,