The feeling which was excited by this "Freshman's rebellion" was one of utter amazement, or awful astonishment tempered with laughter, not unmingled with respect. It was the terrier flying at the lion, when the great mastiff, and bloodhound, and Danish dog had quietly slunk aside. There were in the class beside myself several youths of marked character, and collectively we had already made an impression, to which my intimacy with George Boker, and Professor Dodd, and the very _elite_ of the seniors, added not a little force. We were _mysterious_. Hitherto a Freshman had been the greenest of the green, a creature created for ridicule, a sort of "leathery fox" or mere tyro (_ty_--not a ty-pographical error--_pace_ my kind and courteous reviewer in the _Saturday_)--and here were Freshmen of a new kind rising in dignity above all others. Which reminds me of a merry tale. It was usual for Freshmen to learn to smoke for the first time after coming to college, and for more advanced students to go to their rooms, or find them in others, and smoke them sick or into retreating. I, however, found a source of joy in this, that I could now sit almost from morning till night, and very often on to three in the morning, smoking all the time, being deeply learned in Varinas, Kanaster, and the like; for I smoked nothing but real Holland tobacco, while I could buy it. A party of Sophomores informed George Boker that they intended to smoke me out. "Smoke _him_ out!" quoth George; "why, he'd smoke the whole of you dumb and blind." However, it came to pass that one evening several of them tried it on; and verily they might as well have tried it on to Niklas Henkerwyssel, who, as the legend goes, sold his soul to the devil for the ability to smoke all the time, to whom my father had once compared me. So the cigars and tobacco were burned, and I liked it extremely. Denser grew the smoke, and the windows were closed, to which I cheerfully assented, for I liked to have it thick; and still more smoke and more, and the young gentlemen who had come to smother me grew pale, even as the Porcupines grew pale when they tried to burn out the great Indian sorcerer, who burned _them_! But I, who was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly in such congenial society, only filled Boker's great meerschaum with Latakia, and puffed away. One by one the visitors also "puffed away," _i.e._, vanished through the door into the night. "Shall I open the window?" asked George. "Not on my account," I replied. "I rather enjoy it as it is." "I begin to believe," replied my friend, "that you would like it in Dante's hell of clouds. Do you know what those men came here for? It was _to smoke you out_. And you smoked them out, and never knew it." Which was perfectly true. As for smoking, my only trouble was to be able to buy cigars and tobacco. These were incredibly cheap in those days, and I always dressed very respectably, but my smoking always cost me more than my clothing.