, or when in the middle of the night he
is worn out by revising endless exercises, underlining the mistakes in
red and allotting marks, or weighed down by the wise men of
old--Thucydides, Sophocles, Euripides, the ideas of Plato, wiles of
Pindar, fearfully corrupt strophe of chorus, wondrous guesses of
Teutons and fancies of philologists, when men swoon in the
inexplicable wanderings of the endless examination of Homer, when the
brain reels among such toil--then he hails the pipe, help of mortals,
and hastens to kindle sacrifices at its altars and rejoices as he
tastes its smoke. Let some one, he exclaims, bring Bryant and May's
fire, which strikes a light only if rubbed on the box--

+enenkato tis pur bruantomaikon+
(+kausai d' adunaton me ouchi pros kiste tribeu+)

and taking the best and blackest bowl, and putting on Persian
slippers, sitting on the softest couch, I will light my pipe, with my
feet on the hearth, and I will cast aside all mortal care!

Nor must the delightful verses by "J.K.S." be forgotten, in which the
author of "Lapsus Calami" sings of the "Grand Old Pipe"--

_And I'm smoking a pipe which is fashioned
Like the face of the Grand Old Man;_

and the quaint similarity or comparison between the pipe and
Gladstone, the "Grand Old Man" when "Lapsus Calami" appeared in 1888,
is maintained throughout--

_Grows he black in his face with his labours?
Well, so does my Grand Old Pipe._

_For the sake of its excellent savour,
For the many sweet smokes of the past
My pipe keeps its hold on my favour,
Tho' now it is blackening fast._

But although many pipes were smoked at the Universities, there were
occasionally to be found odd survivals of old prejudices. Dr. Shipley,
in his recent memoir of John Willis Clark, the Cambridge Registrary,
says that even in the 'seventies of the last century there was an
elderly Don at Cambridge who once rebuked a Junior Fellow, who was
smoking a pipe in the Wilderness, with the remark, "No Christian
gentleman smokes a pipe, or if he does he smokes a cigar." The
perpetrator of this bull was the same parson who married late in life,
and returning to his church after a honeymoon of six weeks, publicly
thanked God "for _three_ weeks of unalloyed connubial bliss."

XII

SMOKING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Sweet when the morn is grey;
Sweet, when they've clear'd away
Lunch; and at close of day
P