People went to bed with tobacco box and pipe and candle on a table by the bedside in case they might wake up in the night and feel inclined for tobacco. After supper in a middle-class family, all the men and women smoked together. Nay, it is even stated that the very children in school took a pipe of tobacco instead of breakfast, the master smoking with them and instructing them how to bring the smoke through the nostrils in the fashion of the day. Tobacco was bought and sold in pennyworths. Every man carried a “tobacco box, steel, and touch.” Early in the seventeenth century there are said to have been 7000 tobacconists’ shops in London. This seems incredible; perhaps there were 7000 shops in which tobacco was sold. For instance, all apothecaries sold tobacco. Many of the tobacco shops were of handsome appearance. A tobacco shop had a maple block for cutting the leaf; tongs for holding the coals, and a fire of juniper at which the pipes were lighted. Tobacco was so cheap that a man might fill his pocket with it for twopence. Yet over £300,000 a year was spent in London on tobacco, while there were some—but this is impossible—who were reported to spend, habitually, £400 a year upon tobacco alone; that is, 48,000 pocketsful every year, or 130 pocketsful every day; which is absurd. Expletives and oaths are changed with every generation. The Elizabethans had, no doubt, a great many, of which the following represent but a few. The old Catholic oaths “By’r Lady,” “By the Mass,” and so forth, vanished with the Reformation. We now find a lot of meaningless ejaculations, such as “God’s Wounds,” “God’s Fools,” “God’s Dines,” “Cocke’s Bones,” “Deuce take me,” “Bones a God,” and “Bones a me.” The now familiar “Damn” makes its appearance in literature; but indeed it had flourished in the mouths of the people for many generations. There is nothing really remarkable about the swearing of the Elizabethan period. Every merchant formerly carried a signet-ring, on which was engraved, not his coat-of-arms, but his mark or signet. Thus, a curious signet-ring was found lying in the bed of the river while digging the foundations of London Bridge. At first it was believed to be Sir Thomas Gresham’s, but that seems now to be impossible. It is engraved in _The London and Middlesex Notebook_ (p. 195). The device contains the initials of the owner, with an arrangement of lines probably not intended to have any meaning except that they should be recognised as forming part of Sir Thomas Gresham’s signet. Armed with this ring as an introduction, a messenger could buy and sell for the merchant—it being presumed that the ring never left its owner save to be used as a letter of recommendation and introduction. Sometimes the signet-ring was worn on the thumb. Other merchants’ devices are figured in the “Notebook.”