Many are the duties of the members and the regulations for competitions. No applicant can be elected unless he has reached the age of eighteen. Cigars and cigarettes are tabooed, the pipe being looked upon as the only justifiable means of satisfying that craving which makes us slaves to the weed. The chief object of the club being to teach, through its disciples, the world at large the use of tobacco and to guard against its abuse, it wisely refrains from over-indulgence, and asks no more from its members than that they should “smoke at least one pipe at every club meeting.” [Illustration: THE CONTEST IN FULL SWING. _From a Photograph._] The picture the words “smoking competition” call up to the mind’s eye of the uninitiated, of competitors sitting in a room made almost unbearable by the dense volumes of smoke they are vigorously puffing from their pipes, is as far from the reality as it is possible to imagine. When I stepped into the spick and span Café Graenenburg I was certainly under the impression that I was conversant with the science of smoking, though I must own I had up to that time been willing to accept with blind faith its dictionary definition as “a continuous drawing in and puffing out of the fumes of burning tobacco,” which is, I assume, what nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of my fellow-smokers look upon as the desideratum of their enjoyment. [Illustration: “SMOKE, PLEASE!” A COMMITTEEMAN DEMANDING PROOF THAT A COMPETITOR’S PIPE IS STILL ALIGHT. _From a Photograph._] Now, however, after half the term usually allotted for mankind’s existence upon this earth had run out, the truth dawned upon me that I had hitherto been chasing shadows, and would have to learn all over again. Smoking was, I began to realize, not the simple, easy pastime I had considered it to be, but an art which one might only expect to master after careful study, silent pondering, and steady practice. In this humble frame of mind I lost no time in repairing to an expert for instruction in the management of a pipe, so that all fatal mistakes should be avoided at the outset of my second schooling; and now that I am on the high road towards experiencing hitherto dimly-conceived moments of unalloyed bliss, let me impart my experience as a valuable secret to those who lie under the same mistaken impression which I once fostered. In the words of my preceptor: “The true art of smoking consists in reducing the combustion to a minimum, and yet never allowing the pipe to go out while a particle of tobacco remains in the bowl. The object is not to smoke quickly or much--we are not locomotives bent upon producing force, but men on the quest of solace and enjoyment.” But now let us see the outcome of his doctrine, as displayed by the members of the “Rookersclub” on the occasion of my visit to their meeting-place.