your fellow-travellers. In a _Punch_ of 1855, Leech drew a
railway-platform scene wherein figures one of those precocious
youngsters of a type he loved to draw. A railway porter says to his
mate, as the two gaze at the back of this small swell, with his cane
and top-hat, "What does he say, Bill?" "Why, he says he must have a
compartment to hisself, because he can't get on without his smoke!"
Another drawing in a _Punch_ of 1861 points the same moral. It
represents an elderly "party" and a "fast Etonian" seated side by side
in a first-class compartment. The latter has a cigar in one hand and
with the other offers coins to his neighbour; the explanation is as
follows: "_Old Party._ Really, sir,--I am the manager of the line,
sir--I must inform you that if you persist in smoking, you will be
fined forty shillings, sir. _Fast Etonian._ Well, old boy, I must have
my smoke; so you may as well take your forty shillings now!"

Tobacco was always popular in the army; and even the strongest of
anti-tobacconists would have felt that there was at least something,
if not much, to be said for the abused weed, when in times of
campaigning suffering it played so beneficent a part in soothing and
comforting weary and wounded men. The period covered by this chapter
included both the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, and every one
knows how the soldiers in the Crimea and in India alike craved for
tobacco as for one of the greatest of luxuries, and how even an
occasional smoke cheered and encouraged and sustained suffering
humanity. The late Dr. Norman Kerr, who was no friend to ordinary,
everyday smoking, wrote: "There are occasions, such as in the trenches
during military operations, when worn out with exposure and fatigue,
or when exhausted by slow starvation with no food in prospect, when a
pipe or cigar will be a welcome and valuable friend in need, resting
the weary limbs, cheering the fainting heart, allaying the gnawing
hunger of the empty stomach."

Sir G.W. Forrest, in his book on "The Indian Mutiny," tells how at the
siege of Lucknow, as the month of August advanced, "the tea and sugar,
except a small store kept for invalids, were exhausted. The tobacco
also was gone, and Europeans and natives suffered greatly from the
want of it. The soldiers yearned for a pipe after a hard day's work,
and smoked dry leaves as the only substitute they could obtain." Mr.
L.E.R. Rees in his diary of the same siege noted--"I have given up
smoki