the best substitutes for tobacco they could discover; and they showed a rare genius in discovering different cheap articles to serve their purpose, amongst which were such things as pumpkin stalk, cane, leaves of various trees, and various similar rubbish. All this is vulgar is it not? Yet I can assure you it is not as bad as it sounds. It produces plenty of the chief thing desired--smoke! But to resume. Steve did not remain satisfied for many days with these insipid and weak substitutes; so when his cousin, who was the only one who smoked tobacco regularly, offered to allow him a few puffs at the real thing, he accepted readily enough, and smoked like all novices generally do, viz., smoked as if his life depended upon his finishing the pipe as fast as possible. All went well until he had finished the pipe, for while he was yet smoking, he had thought it not at all as nasty as it had been described to him. But when he had put the pipe down (which was made of two joints of reeds, one about an inch in diameter serving as the bowl, and another one with a tiny opening serving as the stem) he began to feel the effects. He felt as if the world were whirling round and round on purpose to make him sick. He made his way to some water the best way he could, plunged his head therein and washed out his mouth, but nothing would take away that awful feeling which most readers who are also smokers know to be the effect of the first pipe of tobacco. It was only after having lain down on the grass for an hour or so, with closed eyes, vowing innumerable vows never to touch tobacco again, that he got well enough to go home, amid the teasings and jokes of his companions. But I must state here that Steve did not keep his vow never to touch tobacco again. Who does not make these vows when learning to smoke, and who does not break them? Steve tried again and again, and after having broken his pipe and renewed his vow not to smoke again for some dozen times, he succeeded at last in smoking without getting sick, and to-day he can smoke his pipe against any man. CHAPTER VI A CHARACTER SKETCH OF OUR HERO