There was plenty of smoking among undergraduates at Oxford in those days, as may be seen in such books as "The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green," and Hughes's "Tom Brown at Oxford," both of which date from 1861. When Tom, after a reading-bout, thought of going out--"there was a wine party at one of his acquaintance's rooms; or he could go and smoke a cigar in the pool-room, or at any one of a dozen other places." Cigars were the fashionable form of smoke. When Tom offers his box to Captain Hardy, that worthy's son says: "You might as well give him a glass of absinthe. He is churchwarden at home, and can't smoke anything but a long clay," with which the old sailor was accordingly supplied. A striking example of the attitude of the mid-nineteenth century days towards tobacco may be found in connexion with railways and railway travelling. In the early days of such travel there were no smoking compartments, and indeed smoking was "strictly forbidden" practically everywhere on railway premises. Relics of this time may still be seen in many stations and on many platforms in the shape of somewhat dingy placards announcing that smoking is strictly forbidden, and that the penalty is so much. Nowadays the incense from pipes and cigars and cigarettes curls freely round these obsolete notices and helps to make them still dingier. If you wanted to smoke when travelling you had either to contrive to get a compartment to yourself, or to arrange terms with your fellow-travellers. In a _Punch_ of 1855, Leech drew a railway-platform scene wherein figures one of those precocious youngsters of a type he loved to draw. A railway porter says to his mate, as the two gaze at the back of this small swell, with his cane and top-hat, "What does he say, Bill?" "Why, he says he must have a compartment to hisself, because he can't get on without his smoke!" Another drawing in a _Punch_ of 1861 points the same moral. It represents an elderly "party" and a "fast Etonian" seated side by side in a first-class compartment. The latter has a cigar in one hand and with the other offers coins to his neighbour; the explanation is as follows: "_Old Party._ Really, sir,--I am the manager of the line, sir--I must inform you that if you persist in smoking, you will be fined forty shillings, sir. _Fast Etonian._ Well, old boy, I must have my smoke; so you may as well take your forty shillings now!"