EPOS. Only three weeks.

"AVUNCULUS. Good boy!"

In the same "Pocket-Book" one of the ideals of a wife by a bachelor
is--"To approve of smoking all over the house"; while one of the
ideals of a husband by a spinster is--"Not to smoke, or use a
latch-key." Mr. Punch's prelections, of course, are not to be taken
too seriously. They all necessarily have the exaggeration of
caricature; but at the same time they are all significant, and for the
social historian are invaluable.

Tobacco-smoking was advancing victoriously all along the line. Absurd
old conventions and ridiculous restrictions had to give way or were
broken through in every direction. The compartments for smokers on
railway trains, at first provided sparsely and grudgingly, became more
and more numerous. The practice of smoking out of doors, which the
early Victorians held in particular abhorrence, became common--at
least so far as cigars and cigarettes were concerned. Lady Dorothy
Nevill, whose memory covered so large a part of the nineteenth
century, said, in the "Leaves" from her note-book which was published
in 1907, that to smoke in Hyde Park, even up to comparatively recent
years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable; while smoking
anywhere with a lady would, in the earlier days, have been classed as
an almost disgraceful social crime. The first gentleman of whom Lady
Dorothy heard as having been seen smoking a cigar in the Park was the
Duke of Sutherland, and the lady who told her spoke of it as if she
had been present at an earthquake! Pipes were (and are) still looked
at askance in many places where the smoking of cigars and cigarettes
is freely allowed, and fashion frowned on the pipe in street or Park.

Of course, what one might do in the country and what one might do in
town were two quite different things. The following story was told
nearly twenty years ago of the late Duke of Devonshire. An American
tourist began talking one day to a quiet-looking man who was smoking
outside an inn on the Chatsworth estate, and, taking the man for the
inn-keeper, expressed his admiration of the Duke of Devonshire's
domain. "Quite a place, isn't it?" said the American. "Yes, a pleasant
place enough," returned the Englishman. "The fellow who owns it must
be worth a mint of money," said the American, through his cigar-smoke.
"Yes, he's comfortably off," agreed the other. "I wonder if I could
get a look at the old chap," said the stranger, after a short si